The difference between a cross-continental trip, and shooting a signal up and down again to a geostationary satellite is a factor of 20.
And even then, satellite communication is perfectly usable for applications where latency isn't a huge deal, as long as your transmission protocols are properly tweaked for a high-latency connection, as long as you're not sharing it between a whole lot of customers -- the big drawback is that it's rather expensive (for some rather obvious reasons) to have a large portion of that satellite's of bandwidth reserved to yourself.
Who's not to say that the gang that attacked you wouldn't have simply shot you in the leg from a dark corner, and ran up to you to steal your stuff while you were on the ground writhing in pain.
In this case, the crime could be easily executed by one person, which is a hell of a lot harder to track/catch than an entire gang.
If you're going to carry a gun, it should be openly visible. Concealed carry scares the crap out of me. (It also sends the message "He's got a gun. I probably shouldn't mess with him.")
Although it's true that government can be quite lazy at times, we do have the advantage of living in a slightly democratic society, where local officials can be held accountable for how the government operates under their control.
Private monopolistic utilities are often much harder to control, and at the very worst are criminally negligent. Con Edison in New York City is commonly cited as being an example of this, where they profit greatly, yet return almost no money back to their crumbling infrastructure. The giant steam explosion from a few weeks ago and the massive Queens blackout last summer support this theory. In both incidents, they more or less got off the hook completely for it.
I should note that the 2004 election doesn't particularly support my theory of a functioning democracy in America, nor does the fact that Bush's approval rating is still in the double-digits.
It's perfectly possible that there was some sort of small-scale geologic or weather-related event which took place, and caused the supports of the bridge to fail in a cascading manner.
Unlikely, but possible. The Tacoma Narrows bridge was considered to be a generally good design apart from the one tiny thing which made it collapse when the weather conditions were just right. In retrospect, it was easy to see what went wrong, but I wouldn't lay blame on any one person. The bridge was rebuilt with more or less the same design plus a remedial feature to prevent the bridge from entering into harmonic oscillation.
Likewise, you're not exactly going to be able to attract funding to fix or replace the bridge if you're going around telling everybody that everything's just peachy.
Personally, I sort of doubt that this could have been prevented. It's one of those one-in-a-billion sort of odds that unfortunately caught up with us...
I'm more than a bit irked at the media for taking the "structurally deficient" term, and plastering it all over the news without a very clear understanding of what it means. There's no cause for a panic or a rucus -- our bridges are no more dangerous today than they were last week. Hell, we don't even know what caused the bridge to collapse, and ordering all sorts of emergency inspections (which has been done in many many states so far) is pointless considering that the bridge that collapsed was previously deemed to be safe on multiple occasions.
Of course, other recent incidents such as the con edison steam explosion in NYC reek of criminal negligence.
A five-year-old is not likely to understand any possible explanation for a violent rape scene that he/she saw on TV.
Thanks to the FCC, that's something you'll never have to worry about. A graphic rape scene simply isn't going to be shown on network TV or basic cable. The US is so sensitized to sexuality that you shouldn't have to worry about anything more than seeing an adult couple kiss each other.
I don't really get why people refuse to give an honest answer to a 6-year old who asks "where do babies come from?", while a child who asks "what are guns for?" will more likely than not get an honest answer.
Seriously, if you subscribe to a porn channel with kids in the house, you deserve whatever you get for it.
Sounds more like a problem with Freenet, which most people seem to have a problem with getting to work properly.
Likewise, I wouldn't use Java performance as a good indicator of anything, because I mean.... let's be honest here... it's java. There are one or two good java applications out there, but for the most part, it just plain sucks.
There are some beautiful typefaces out there, and Microsoft has more or less veritably shat upon the world of typography by imposing Arial and Times New Roman on the world for over a decade.
As a concession, some of the new office 2007 fonts are quite nice, and Consolas is probably one of the best fixed-width fonts out there.
Apple's built-in font collection is quite a bit better, and their font-rendering system is vastly superior to just about anything else out there.
I sort of thought that Gnome was beginning to edge KDE out after a few years of KDE being somewhat superior.
Right now, Gnome is lean, mature, and stable, even on relatively old hardware. As an added bonus, Gnome's GUI is clean and consistent compared to KDE's (not to mention that they've resisted the temptation to add 80 million configuration options to the menus and toolbars of every single one of their apps).
My other usability pet peeve with KDE is its heavy reliance on toolbars with dozens of nondescript blue icons. Even for experienced users, it's a bit daunting.
If you really want to take the minimalism to the next level, try out XFCE. It's more or less a very lightweight Gnome (sort of analogous to the early versions of Firefox versus SeaMonkey) that also uses GTK2. It's incredibly snappy even on old hardware, and the UI is fantastic (and pretty good-looking if I might add). I'd compare the UI to a vastly improved Windows 95 (or 2000), with a few mac-like touches thrown in. It does everything I need it to, reacts in ways that you'd expect it to, and just plain works.
The other guy in my cubible has a brand-new PC with Vista on it, and comments on how much faster my 6-year old PC appears than his.
Re:Geeks do- everyone else doesn't.
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The DRM Scorecard
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· Score: 1
The success of the RIAA/MPAA isn't measured in terms of how many lawsuits they've filed/won (despite their questionable legality).
The MPAA and RIAA lost their primary battle long ago when they ceased to be relevant and credible. It's going to take a *lot* for them to earn that back, and I frankly don't see it happening.
The internet has undoubtedly reduced the number (and quality) of superstars and celebrities out there (you can also blame the record industry and clearchannel for the quality plunging through the floor).
On the other hand, music as a whole has benefitted greatly and considerably increased in diversity. Chances are that there are more than a few bands that match your tastes out there, and odds are that they actually have a pretty significant following.
Over the past few years, the indie circuit has become more and more and more diverse to encompass just about every genre, and has even spawned a few genres of its own (or at the very least, greatly popularized previously obscure styles such as Post-Rock and french-influenced funk/electronica a la Justice).
Quite a few artists that have risen up through the indie circuit over the past few years are currently considered to be amongst the most talented popular musicians of our generation -- Sufjan Stevens stands out in particular as being an absolute genius. I have a feeling that Sam Beam of Iron & Wine will likely receive quite a bit of attention once his new album is out.
This past year alone is pretty widely considered to have been one of the best ever for the independent music scene, and has arguably produced as many memorable albums as all of the 90s did. Artists and Albums that have risen through the indie circuit, standing out as being particularly fantastic to my mind include (in no particular order) The Arcade Fire, Death Cab for Cutie, The Decemberists, Of Montreal, Iron & Wine, Sufjan Stevens, Calexico, Spoon, Final Fantasy, Patrick Wolf, Andrew Bird, Feist, The National, Bright Eyes, Okkervil River, Neutral Milk Hotel, 65daysofstatic, Justice, LCD Soundsystem, Jose Gonzalez, Josh Ritter, Elliot Smith, Nick Drake, and the list goes on and on....
The awesome bit is that the above list encompasses almost every genre imaginiable. Apart from the usual Indie Rock, there's some electronica, a few singer-songwriters, a folk musician, a southwestern ensemble, two solo violinists, an instrumental post-rock band, and some electronica.
The music industry seems to have lost the ability to find people these days who make both good celebrities and good musicians. David Bowie stands out as doing a particularly good job of both. Other "superstars" of today have indeed climbed to the top purely on accord of their own talent -- Coldplay and U2 stand out in this regard, and seeing Mark Konpfler perform with a few former members of the Dire Straits a few years back was an absolutely amazing experience. Apart from that, though, the top 10 is more or less absolute garbage.
Elton can say what he wants, but the music scene is the absolute best it's been during my lifetime.
Requiring iTunes to manage the thing even for people explicitly not using it as a glorified iPod doesn't sound like a particularly great idea.
Likewise, I don't think all that many people tend to make a regular habit of plugging their phones into their computers.
It's perfectly technically feasible, and in all likelihood would be easier for the user to update wirelessly. Requiring iTunes was a business decision plain and simple.
For a device as advanced as the iPhone, I'm shocked that this update can't be automatically done via WiFi or EDGE. I mean, it's practically a freaking computer on its own, and doesn't need to be tethered to yet another device.
Dear Apple,
Please stop selling out. You're on a slippery slope, and we won't forgive you another time after you slipped up in the 90s.
Hehe. Calling North Pole a "bustling burg" made me smile.
I've been in Fairbanks for the past 3 months, and can honestly say that I'm a big fan of your city. I'll be sad to leave here once my temporary job at the GI is done next month.
I'm not going to throw my support behind Stevens, but it's very hard for somebody from the lower 48 to understand the issues facing Alaska without actually living here for a period, or at the very least, studying the issue more closely.
The APF has nothing to do with Ted Stevens, and was actually a pretty neat strategy cooked up by the state government that has done quite a bit to benefit its citizens. It's not at all funded by federal tax dollars.
The bridge to nowhere (the one to the tiny island off Ketchikan) never got built. Democracy actually *worked* in this situation, and when people objected to it, the project was halted.
The second bridge to nowhere would have allowed the development of a huge undeveloped plot of land around Anchorage to relieve overcrowding in the city, and accommodate future growth. Sure, the cost vs. benefit analysis might be controversial, but the project certainly did have merit.
It's essentially laid out like a big suburb, with a somewhat built-up "downtown". The land mass of the city of Anchorage is roughly the size of Rhode Island, so don't let the population figures mislead you into thinking it's a big bustling metropolis. There are a lot of people, but they're spread over a fairly wide area.
Likewise, for a variety of environmental concerns (earthquakes, permafrost, and unstable soil), super-dense development around Anchorage isn't encouraged.
Given the dirt cheap cost of land anywhere else in the state, $750K for a 1.5 acre plot is indeed exorbitant. The military base landlocking issue is an irritating one that plagues Alaska's second largest city, Fairbanks as well.
Alaska's infrastructure costs are staggering. After each winter, road crews scramble to rebuild large portions of highway damaged by frost heaves from the permafrost.
Likewise, consider the fact that the population density here is roughly 1 person per square mile, compared to over 1000 people/mile in New Jersey.
Given the state's low population density, combined with importance of the oil reserves, it's not really surprising that Alaska gets more tax money back than it spends.
Coincidentally, Alaska doesn't hold the crown for the most federal money received per tax dollar spent. That honor has gone to New Mexico every year since 1981. Take a look at the data yourself. If you want to complain about anything, complain about DC neighbors Maryland and Virginia swimming in federal cash.
After all, you've got to pay the bills. Perhaps this guy has a very good grip on what he can and cannot change without getting fired.
I'd rather have somebody with good intentions and good goals running the system, helping to slowly erode the bureaucracy than somebody who actually feels that the current state of the TSA is perfectly acceptable.
Flying isn't a particularly pleasant experience, but in my experiences, the TSA isn't complete and pure evil, and they take a lot of crap for enforcing policies over which they have no control. Quite frankly, the airlines are being run incredibly poorly these days, and the FAA's current air traffic woes aren't helping things at all.
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The difference between a cross-continental trip, and shooting a signal up and down again to a geostationary satellite is a factor of 20.
And even then, satellite communication is perfectly usable for applications where latency isn't a huge deal, as long as your transmission protocols are properly tweaked for a high-latency connection, as long as you're not sharing it between a whole lot of customers -- the big drawback is that it's rather expensive (for some rather obvious reasons) to have a large portion of that satellite's of bandwidth reserved to yourself.
It works both ways.
Who's not to say that the gang that attacked you wouldn't have simply shot you in the leg from a dark corner, and ran up to you to steal your stuff while you were on the ground writhing in pain.
In this case, the crime could be easily executed by one person, which is a hell of a lot harder to track/catch than an entire gang.
If you're going to carry a gun, it should be openly visible. Concealed carry scares the crap out of me. (It also sends the message "He's got a gun. I probably shouldn't mess with him.")
The speed of light is more of a limiting factor for latency, and not throughput.
That said, it's not even a big deal for latency -- light travels at 186,282 miles/second. New York to LA is approximately 2,800 miles.
Most of the latency/bandwidth lag comes from routing or congestion along the tubes.
Although it's true that government can be quite lazy at times, we do have the advantage of living in a slightly democratic society, where local officials can be held accountable for how the government operates under their control.
Private monopolistic utilities are often much harder to control, and at the very worst are criminally negligent. Con Edison in New York City is commonly cited as being an example of this, where they profit greatly, yet return almost no money back to their crumbling infrastructure. The giant steam explosion from a few weeks ago and the massive Queens blackout last summer support this theory. In both incidents, they more or less got off the hook completely for it.
I should note that the 2004 election doesn't particularly support my theory of a functioning democracy in America, nor does the fact that Bush's approval rating is still in the double-digits.
It's perfectly possible that there was some sort of small-scale geologic or weather-related event which took place, and caused the supports of the bridge to fail in a cascading manner.
Unlikely, but possible. The Tacoma Narrows bridge was considered to be a generally good design apart from the one tiny thing which made it collapse when the weather conditions were just right. In retrospect, it was easy to see what went wrong, but I wouldn't lay blame on any one person. The bridge was rebuilt with more or less the same design plus a remedial feature to prevent the bridge from entering into harmonic oscillation.
Back home, the one-lane farm bridges in my town are all "structurally-deficient" despite there being absolutely nothing wrong with them.
In fact, spending money to upgrade them to two-lane bridges would be stupid.
In Soviet Russia, the government became the media.
In 21st-century America, the media is becoming the government.
Likewise, you're not exactly going to be able to attract funding to fix or replace the bridge if you're going around telling everybody that everything's just peachy.
Personally, I sort of doubt that this could have been prevented. It's one of those one-in-a-billion sort of odds that unfortunately caught up with us...
I'm more than a bit irked at the media for taking the "structurally deficient" term, and plastering it all over the news without a very clear understanding of what it means. There's no cause for a panic or a rucus -- our bridges are no more dangerous today than they were last week. Hell, we don't even know what caused the bridge to collapse, and ordering all sorts of emergency inspections (which has been done in many many states so far) is pointless considering that the bridge that collapsed was previously deemed to be safe on multiple occasions.
Of course, other recent incidents such as the con edison steam explosion in NYC reek of criminal negligence.
Thanks to the FCC, that's something you'll never have to worry about. A graphic rape scene simply isn't going to be shown on network TV or basic cable. The US is so sensitized to sexuality that you shouldn't have to worry about anything more than seeing an adult couple kiss each other.
I don't really get why people refuse to give an honest answer to a 6-year old who asks "where do babies come from?", while a child who asks "what are guns for?" will more likely than not get an honest answer.
Seriously, if you subscribe to a porn channel with kids in the house, you deserve whatever you get for it.
Sounds more like a problem with Freenet, which most people seem to have a problem with getting to work properly.
Likewise, I wouldn't use Java performance as a good indicator of anything, because I mean.... let's be honest here... it's java. There are one or two good java applications out there, but for the most part, it just plain sucks.
I don't think he's joking.
There are some beautiful typefaces out there, and Microsoft has more or less veritably shat upon the world of typography by imposing Arial and Times New Roman on the world for over a decade.
As a concession, some of the new office 2007 fonts are quite nice, and Consolas is probably one of the best fixed-width fonts out there.
Apple's built-in font collection is quite a bit better, and their font-rendering system is vastly superior to just about anything else out there.
Man.... is it just me, or did Red Hat hire a bunch of ex-soviet propaganda writers to be their marketing department?
I'll have some liberation toast with my freedom fries. Thanks.
Really?
I sort of thought that Gnome was beginning to edge KDE out after a few years of KDE being somewhat superior.
Right now, Gnome is lean, mature, and stable, even on relatively old hardware. As an added bonus, Gnome's GUI is clean and consistent compared to KDE's (not to mention that they've resisted the temptation to add 80 million configuration options to the menus and toolbars of every single one of their apps).
My other usability pet peeve with KDE is its heavy reliance on toolbars with dozens of nondescript blue icons. Even for experienced users, it's a bit daunting.
If you really want to take the minimalism to the next level, try out XFCE. It's more or less a very lightweight Gnome (sort of analogous to the early versions of Firefox versus SeaMonkey) that also uses GTK2. It's incredibly snappy even on old hardware, and the UI is fantastic (and pretty good-looking if I might add). I'd compare the UI to a vastly improved Windows 95 (or 2000), with a few mac-like touches thrown in. It does everything I need it to, reacts in ways that you'd expect it to, and just plain works.
The other guy in my cubible has a brand-new PC with Vista on it, and comments on how much faster my 6-year old PC appears than his.
The success of the RIAA/MPAA isn't measured in terms of how many lawsuits they've filed/won (despite their questionable legality).
The MPAA and RIAA lost their primary battle long ago when they ceased to be relevant and credible. It's going to take a *lot* for them to earn that back, and I frankly don't see it happening.
The RIAA and MPAA aren't losing. They've lost.
The internet has undoubtedly reduced the number (and quality) of superstars and celebrities out there (you can also blame the record industry and clearchannel for the quality plunging through the floor).
On the other hand, music as a whole has benefitted greatly and considerably increased in diversity. Chances are that there are more than a few bands that match your tastes out there, and odds are that they actually have a pretty significant following.
Over the past few years, the indie circuit has become more and more and more diverse to encompass just about every genre, and has even spawned a few genres of its own (or at the very least, greatly popularized previously obscure styles such as Post-Rock and french-influenced funk/electronica a la Justice).
Quite a few artists that have risen up through the indie circuit over the past few years are currently considered to be amongst the most talented popular musicians of our generation -- Sufjan Stevens stands out in particular as being an absolute genius. I have a feeling that Sam Beam of Iron & Wine will likely receive quite a bit of attention once his new album is out.
This past year alone is pretty widely considered to have been one of the best ever for the independent music scene, and has arguably produced as many memorable albums as all of the 90s did. Artists and Albums that have risen through the indie circuit, standing out as being particularly fantastic to my mind include (in no particular order) The Arcade Fire, Death Cab for Cutie, The Decemberists, Of Montreal, Iron & Wine, Sufjan Stevens, Calexico, Spoon, Final Fantasy, Patrick Wolf, Andrew Bird, Feist, The National, Bright Eyes, Okkervil River, Neutral Milk Hotel, 65daysofstatic, Justice, LCD Soundsystem, Jose Gonzalez, Josh Ritter, Elliot Smith, Nick Drake, and the list goes on and on....
The awesome bit is that the above list encompasses almost every genre imaginiable. Apart from the usual Indie Rock, there's some electronica, a few singer-songwriters, a folk musician, a southwestern ensemble, two solo violinists, an instrumental post-rock band, and some electronica.
The music industry seems to have lost the ability to find people these days who make both good celebrities and good musicians. David Bowie stands out as doing a particularly good job of both. Other "superstars" of today have indeed climbed to the top purely on accord of their own talent -- Coldplay and U2 stand out in this regard, and seeing Mark Konpfler perform with a few former members of the Dire Straits a few years back was an absolutely amazing experience. Apart from that, though, the top 10 is more or less absolute garbage.
Elton can say what he wants, but the music scene is the absolute best it's been during my lifetime.
Requiring iTunes to manage the thing even for people explicitly not using it as a glorified iPod doesn't sound like a particularly great idea.
Likewise, I don't think all that many people tend to make a regular habit of plugging their phones into their computers.
It's perfectly technically feasible, and in all likelihood would be easier for the user to update wirelessly. Requiring iTunes was a business decision plain and simple.
Yes, but the tricky thing about this situation is that it's a "who will guard the guards" type of deal.
If the root user can set that attribute, he can just as easily unset it, modify the data, and clean up after himself before re-setting it.
Remotely spitting your logs out to a line printer managed by a trusted 3rd party would seem to be a reasonable solution.
For a device as advanced as the iPhone, I'm shocked that this update can't be automatically done via WiFi or EDGE. I mean, it's practically a freaking computer on its own, and doesn't need to be tethered to yet another device.
Dear Apple,
Please stop selling out. You're on a slippery slope, and we won't forgive you another time after you slipped up in the 90s.
Sincerely,
Your customers.
Hehe. Calling North Pole a "bustling burg" made me smile.
I've been in Fairbanks for the past 3 months, and can honestly say that I'm a big fan of your city. I'll be sad to leave here once my temporary job at the GI is done next month.
I'm not going to throw my support behind Stevens, but it's very hard for somebody from the lower 48 to understand the issues facing Alaska without actually living here for a period, or at the very least, studying the issue more closely.
The APF has nothing to do with Ted Stevens, and was actually a pretty neat strategy cooked up by the state government that has done quite a bit to benefit its citizens. It's not at all funded by federal tax dollars.
The bridge to nowhere (the one to the tiny island off Ketchikan) never got built. Democracy actually *worked* in this situation, and when people objected to it, the project was halted.
The second bridge to nowhere would have allowed the development of a huge undeveloped plot of land around Anchorage to relieve overcrowding in the city, and accommodate future growth. Sure, the cost vs. benefit analysis might be controversial, but the project certainly did have merit.
You've clearly never been to Anchorage.
It's essentially laid out like a big suburb, with a somewhat built-up "downtown". The land mass of the city of Anchorage is roughly the size of Rhode Island, so don't let the population figures mislead you into thinking it's a big bustling metropolis. There are a lot of people, but they're spread over a fairly wide area.
Likewise, for a variety of environmental concerns (earthquakes, permafrost, and unstable soil), super-dense development around Anchorage isn't encouraged.
Given the dirt cheap cost of land anywhere else in the state, $750K for a 1.5 acre plot is indeed exorbitant. The military base landlocking issue is an irritating one that plagues Alaska's second largest city, Fairbanks as well.
Alaska's infrastructure costs are staggering. After each winter, road crews scramble to rebuild large portions of highway damaged by frost heaves from the permafrost.
Likewise, consider the fact that the population density here is roughly 1 person per square mile, compared to over 1000 people/mile in New Jersey.
Given the state's low population density, combined with importance of the oil reserves, it's not really surprising that Alaska gets more tax money back than it spends.
Coincidentally, Alaska doesn't hold the crown for the most federal money received per tax dollar spent. That honor has gone to New Mexico every year since 1981. Take a look at the data yourself. If you want to complain about anything, complain about DC neighbors Maryland and Virginia swimming in federal cash.
It's also probably worth noting that the Ketchikan bridge probably wouldn't have gotten built anyway due to local opposition.
Actually, I think that for once, a Saturn V might be a big enough target for the missile defence system to accurately hit :-)
Maybe he's just doing what he's told?
After all, you've got to pay the bills. Perhaps this guy has a very good grip on what he can and cannot change without getting fired.
I'd rather have somebody with good intentions and good goals running the system, helping to slowly erode the bureaucracy than somebody who actually feels that the current state of the TSA is perfectly acceptable.
Flying isn't a particularly pleasant experience, but in my experiences, the TSA isn't complete and pure evil, and they take a lot of crap for enforcing policies over which they have no control. Quite frankly, the airlines are being run incredibly poorly these days, and the FAA's current air traffic woes aren't helping things at all.