I live in what is called a "conservation area" which forms part of a rural area of the UK called the Cotswolds. Think Agatha Christie murder mysteries or Jeeves and Wooster and you've about pictured my neighbourhood ( We Are Here). This means:
Telephone bandwidth limited to 33.6kbps. No "Home Highway" (lo-cost ISDN), in fact no ISDN at all.
I am not allowed to put a satellite dish on my house nor in my garden.
The roof tiles must remain as clay thus preventing me from putting a dish in the loft (clay blocks signals).
I'm not anywhere near a town with cable. In fact not anywhere near a town at all.
Due to low population my area is "low priority" for digital terrestrial TV (digital multichannel TV through an arial).
Now what I want to know is why people in towns need high bandwidth. If you want to go shopping, chat with friends, or watch movies, you just go to the mall, the pub or the cinema, right? I can't do this without having to drive a heck of a long way first.
So I would be prepared to pay MORE for high bandwidth. It would save me money (travel).
Rural areas have the greatest need for bandwidth- and are prepared to pay more- yet where is the bandwidth the worst? Rural areas, of course. And then we get hit for petrol (gas) tax because we use our cars more! WTF???
Now what I really want is a 512kbps satellite downfeed which I could then redistribute along our row of cottages using a LAN (I already have a home LAN).
Thankfully I don't live in the USA so at least I have excellent digital mobile 'phone reception with free email to my handset. Nice.
You mean apart from still paying 10 quid a month for a service most other UK ISPs charge a fiver for, or give away for free?
A static IP address plus fax-to-email and batch FTP is not worth an extra five quid a month (although it is Most Handy, I admit).
Demon need to cut their price to a fiver a month or risk going down the pan.
I'm only sticking with them because I've been with them so long that my email address and web site are now so extensively cross-linked by other web sites and search engines that it would take me two years to get all my traffic back.
According to a "friend in the know" at Telehouse, Scottish Telecom have invested far too much in Demon to let the company sink. Frankly I see little evidence of this- every week I expect Demon's Falco obituary in NTK. Cliff Stanford knew when to quit- nowt to do with Demon needing a telecoms partner; all to do with increased competition.
Demon isn't free. It's ten quid (US$15) per month.
You get a static IP address and free fax-to-email but other than that, it ain't so hot anymore. If it wasn't for the fact that my email and website addresses are so ingrained on my friends and search engines' collective conciousnesses, I would have quit long ago.
Side topic: Is Slashdot y2k compliant
on
Killer Asteroid
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· Score: 1
Having a two-digit year does not necessarily make something non-Y2K compliant.
To be non-compliant you'd need to DO something with the two-digit year which would create a problem; eg. compare two values, keep adding values etc. If the code doesn't manipulate the data you don't have a problem (other than stupid users, which is another story altogether).
If 99 is just a tag for this current year, and the next year is tagged as 00, and no code tries to presume any kind of numerical order, it's not a problem. You could just as well tag this year as "Bob" and next year as "Fred".
Hey, Bill, you mean we're supposed to to like, tell the truth when we register on websites?
I feel sorry for anyone trying to build up marketing information based on the crap I type in. Poor old Bob Flemming, born 7/6/1914, resident of, variously, Falkland Islands, Peru, Islands Of St Kitts And St Nevis, Estonia and (today's favourite) Serbia, who has worked for the Defence, Finance, Childcare and (this is the best one) Water Treatment industries. Bob must have a hell of a time dealing with all that junk mail I've signed him up for.
As for spam, I just create a new, unique, disposable email account for every registration. In fact it's quite fun spotting where spammers have got their addresses from.
FFS, if personal privacy worries you, Bill, don't type anything personal in- make it up!
Has anyone done a study on the reliability of website registration data? I think they're in for a disapointment.
By the way, Bill, you can stop sending TechNet update emails to microsoftjunk@cimmerii.demon.co.uk now...
>Many Web sites ask users for registration >information, including name, address, >demographic data and credit information. >While this data enables businesses to offer >better services and support for customers and >do more targeted marketing,
What is more likely is that HMGovt had some reason to do something unusual with the satellite (observe somewhere else, interferre with other satellites, lauch a mini-satellite, etc) and were a bit pissed off when Fred Bloggs at some observatory started telling all and sundry that the satellite was doing odd things.
Ergo I think the Reuters story is misinformation from HMG to cover some kind of illicit but fully approved use of the satellite- top of my list at the moment is that the Brits are now spying on the Yanks (basically from the news here at the moment it looks like the UK is looking for an excuse to pull out of the Iraq situation as we suspect the USA is using this as a cover for spy operations- but in that case why would NASA pull it's obs data? arguing against myself here, oh dear).
I have no inside knowledge, but I do know that the chaps at GCHQ (10 miles down the road) are VERY CLUED. There is just no way they would have let this happen. We leave millitary fuckups to the Americans, they seem to have much more practice.
It is the police and customs that want key escrow, not GCHQ. If GCHQ want your private key, they just send the g-men round to take it off your hard drive- either physically or electronically.
Put it this way, if GCHQ wanted your private key, a) they wouldn't need a law to be passed to do get it and b) you'd never know.
Remember, you don't need A-levels or a degree to join the police, but you do to join GCHQ.
Living near Cheltenham I hear this *so* often from people who work at GCHQ. They're tired of being represented as wanting key escrow. It's crap. They have enough Men In Black, enough survellience kit and enough processing power to hack *anything*. Police and customs are the fuckwits.
The best way to crack a secret code is to be there at the time and place of encryption/decryption, not to intercept it half way through. Jeez, get a life, amateurs...
Keyboard, schmeeboard. Has little to do with wrist pain. I know, I used to suffer from it.
My top tips are:
- (MOST IMPORTANT) Invest in a foam wrist rest which is the same height and length as the front of your keyboard. Cost about one quid (US$1.50). If it doesn't fit cut up a bulky glossy monthly computer magazine and wrap it in sellotape- works just as well and you can trim it to size.
- (VERY IMPORTANT) Make sure the desk and seat are at the right height. This REALLY makes a difference with wrist pain! We need to shift the weight off your wrists and onto your spine. With your feet flat on the floor, your upper legs should be horizontal, your back should be straight, your upper arms should be straight, your lower arms should be horizontal (resting on the chair arm rests), and your hands should rest comfortably on the wrist rest and keyboard.
- Get an adjustable monitor stand and make sure the top of the visible screen is directly at the height of your eyes. Once again discarded monthly bulky glossy magazines come to the rescue and make excellent stackable monitor stands! Or use last year's telephone directory. This will stop you "crouching" and will ease the pressure off your wrists- your SPINE should be supporting your weight, not your hands, remember.
- Move the monitor DIRECTLY in front of you. You, your keyboard, the desk and your monitor should all be in a straight line. More to do with back and neck pain than wrist pain but again any weight shifted from your hands to your spine will help a lot.
- Try adjusting the height of your keyboard. Try it with and without the feet/struts or whatever your keyboard has.
- Type with both hands, don't hunt-and-peck, especially if you are left-handed. Your brain is quite capable of dividing up the keyboard into left-half and right-half without the aid of Uncle Bill's alien ergonomics team.
- Use the mouse a lot? Bad news is that Microsoft IntelliMice and ErgoMice are actually MOST EXCELLENT- if only their software was as good as their mice! The ONLY Microsoft product I recommend! Also a mouse pad with integral wrist-rest will help, as will a wider arm rest on your chair, or using a corner-shaped desk. You need to rest your elbow when mousing, otherwise you are going to put weight on your wrist again...
All of this learned on a one-day training course at IBM Warwick, UK!
Okay, you can start flaming me about recomending Microsoft Mice now.
Oh dear... I'm confused. I thought speed of light was a constant ( c )? Or is that speed of light in a vaccuum? So what's the speed of light in vaccuum compared to the speed of light in air or water, then?
Feel free to flame away, I have absolutely no clue what I'm talking about and would appreciate it if someone could explain it in armchair terms.
At least now I know what computer illiterates feel like when I talk to them.
(it ain't my fault, my physics teacher was too attractive for 16-year-old boys to actually pay attention to what she *said*:-)
Yea! At last someone voices the opinion I've held since my early days at the Commodore Pet.
Programming can be art, especially if it is hobbyist code (or is "open source code" the politically correct term for hobbyist code these days? I remember when *all* code was open source by default:-).
Sure I design code to be fast and efficient. But given a near negligible difference in performance between nice artistic code and nasty obtuse code I choose nice every time.
What makes code "nice" and "artistic"? Well, human readability first and foremost. Computer's can't appreciate art so the ONLY things appreciating "artistic" code are humans. Well commented code can be art. Multi-component systems, which have an overall holds-it-all-together style can be art. Logical code can be art (you may ask "how can code be illogical?"; I say ask a COBOL programmer). Neatly laid out code can be art. All these kinds of frills are SOLEY for us humans' benefit; most of these frills are stripped out when the source code meets the compiler.
Examples of "non-artistic" code include using different variable names to refer to the same thing; indentation nightmares; unnecisarily obfuscated code (as opposed to neat concise tricks); poorly commented code; illogically or poorly structured code... the list goes on.
I feel appreciated now! Someone else has realised that my job cannot be done by robots!
Slashdot Mirror
I live in what is called a "conservation area" which forms part of a rural area of the UK called the Cotswolds. Think Agatha Christie murder mysteries or Jeeves and Wooster and you've about pictured my neighbourhood ( We Are Here). This means:
Now what I want to know is why people in towns need high bandwidth. If you want to go shopping, chat with friends, or watch movies, you just go to the mall, the pub or the cinema, right? I can't do this without having to drive a heck of a long way first.
So I would be prepared to pay MORE for high bandwidth. It would save me money (travel).
Rural areas have the greatest need for bandwidth- and are prepared to pay more- yet where is the bandwidth the worst? Rural areas, of course. And then we get hit for petrol (gas) tax because we use our cars more! WTF???
Now what I really want is a 512kbps satellite downfeed which I could then redistribute along our row of cottages using a LAN (I already have a home LAN).
Thankfully I don't live in the USA so at least I have excellent digital mobile 'phone reception with free email to my handset. Nice.
--
You mean apart from still paying 10 quid a month for a service most other UK ISPs charge a fiver for, or give away for free?
A static IP address plus fax-to-email and batch FTP is not worth an extra five quid a month (although it is Most Handy, I admit).
Demon need to cut their price to a fiver a month or risk going down the pan.
I'm only sticking with them because I've been with them so long that my email address and web site are now so extensively cross-linked by other web sites and search engines that it would take me two years to get all my traffic back.
According to a "friend in the know" at Telehouse, Scottish Telecom have invested far too much in Demon to let the company sink. Frankly I see little evidence of this- every week I expect Demon's Falco obituary in NTK. Cliff Stanford knew when to quit- nowt to do with Demon needing a telecoms partner; all to do with increased competition.
--
Demon isn't free. It's ten quid (US$15) per month.
You get a static IP address and free fax-to-email but other than that, it ain't so hot anymore. If it wasn't for the fact that my email and website addresses are so ingrained on my friends and search engines' collective conciousnesses, I would have quit long ago.
If they go free, though... NICE.
--
http://webserv.vnunet.com/www_user/plsql/pkg_vnu_s earch_mo.s_story?c_story_id=82266
Having a two-digit year does not necessarily make something non-Y2K compliant.
To be non-compliant you'd need to DO something with the two-digit year which would create a problem; eg. compare two values, keep adding values etc. If the code doesn't manipulate the data you don't have a problem (other than stupid users, which is another story altogether).
If 99 is just a tag for this current year, and the next year is tagged as 00, and no code tries to presume any kind of numerical order, it's not a problem. You could just as well tag this year as "Bob" and next year as "Fred".
Hey, Bill, you mean we're supposed to to like, tell the truth when we register on websites?
I feel sorry for anyone trying to build up marketing information based on the crap I type in. Poor old Bob Flemming, born 7/6/1914, resident of, variously, Falkland Islands, Peru, Islands Of St Kitts And St Nevis, Estonia and (today's favourite) Serbia, who has worked for the Defence, Finance, Childcare and (this is the best one) Water Treatment industries. Bob must have a hell of a time dealing with all that junk mail I've signed him up for.
As for spam, I just create a new, unique, disposable email account for every registration. In fact it's quite fun spotting where spammers have got their addresses from.
FFS, if personal privacy worries you, Bill, don't type anything personal in- make it up!
Has anyone done a study on the reliability of website registration data? I think they're in for a disapointment.
By the way, Bill, you can stop sending TechNet update emails to microsoftjunk@cimmerii.demon.co.uk now...
>Many Web sites ask users for registration
>information, including name, address,
>demographic data and credit information.
>While this data enables businesses to offer
>better services and support for customers and
>do more targeted marketing,
What is more likely is that HMGovt had some reason to do something unusual with the satellite (observe somewhere else, interferre with other satellites, lauch a mini-satellite, etc) and were a bit pissed off when Fred Bloggs at some observatory started telling all and sundry that the satellite was doing odd things.
Ergo I think the Reuters story is misinformation from HMG to cover some kind of illicit but fully approved use of the satellite- top of my list at the moment is that the Brits are now spying on the Yanks (basically from the news here at the moment it looks like the UK is looking for an excuse to pull out of the Iraq situation as we suspect the USA is using this as a cover for spy operations- but in that case why would NASA pull it's obs data? arguing against myself here, oh dear).
I have no inside knowledge, but I do know that the chaps at GCHQ (10 miles down the road) are VERY CLUED. There is just no way they would have let this happen. We leave millitary fuckups to the Americans, they seem to have much more practice.
(anyway it's arse, not ass, ass is a donkey
It is the police and customs that want key escrow, not GCHQ. If GCHQ want your private key, they just send the g-men round to take it off your hard drive- either physically or electronically.
Put it this way, if GCHQ wanted your private key, a) they wouldn't need a law to be passed to do get it and b) you'd never know.
Remember, you don't need A-levels or a degree to join the police, but you do to join GCHQ.
Living near Cheltenham I hear this *so* often from people who work at GCHQ. They're tired of being represented as wanting key escrow. It's crap. They have enough Men In Black, enough survellience kit and enough processing power to hack *anything*. Police and customs are the fuckwits.
The best way to crack a secret code is to be there at the time and place of encryption/decryption, not to intercept it half way through. Jeez, get a life, amateurs...
Keyboard, schmeeboard. Has little to do with wrist pain. I know, I used to suffer from it.
My top tips are:
- (MOST IMPORTANT) Invest in a foam wrist rest which is the same height and length as the front of your keyboard. Cost about one quid (US$1.50). If it doesn't fit cut up a bulky glossy monthly computer magazine and wrap it in sellotape- works just as well and you can trim it to size.
- (VERY IMPORTANT) Make sure the desk and seat are at the right height. This REALLY makes a difference with wrist pain! We need to shift the weight off your wrists and onto your spine. With your feet flat on the floor, your upper legs should be horizontal, your back should be straight, your upper arms should be straight, your lower arms should be horizontal (resting on the chair arm rests), and your hands should rest comfortably on the wrist rest and keyboard.
- Get an adjustable monitor stand and make sure the top of the visible screen is directly at the height of your eyes. Once again discarded monthly bulky glossy magazines come to the rescue and make excellent stackable monitor stands! Or use last year's telephone directory. This will stop you "crouching" and will ease the pressure off your wrists- your SPINE should be supporting your weight, not your hands, remember.
- Move the monitor DIRECTLY in front of you. You, your keyboard, the desk and your monitor should all be in a straight line. More to do with back and neck pain than wrist pain but again any weight shifted from your hands to your spine will help a lot.
- Try adjusting the height of your keyboard. Try it with and without the feet/struts or whatever your keyboard has.
- Type with both hands, don't hunt-and-peck, especially if you are left-handed. Your brain is quite capable of dividing up the keyboard into left-half and right-half without the aid of Uncle Bill's alien ergonomics team.
- Use the mouse a lot? Bad news is that Microsoft IntelliMice and ErgoMice are actually MOST EXCELLENT- if only their software was as good as their mice! The ONLY Microsoft product I recommend! Also a mouse pad with integral wrist-rest will help, as will a wider arm rest on your chair, or using a corner-shaped desk. You need to rest your elbow when mousing, otherwise you are going to put weight on your wrist again...
All of this learned on a one-day training course at IBM Warwick, UK!
Okay, you can start flaming me about recomending Microsoft Mice now.
Oh dear... I'm confused. I thought speed of light was a constant ( c )? Or is that speed of light in a vaccuum? So what's the speed of light in vaccuum compared to the speed of light in air or water, then?
Feel free to flame away, I have absolutely no clue what I'm talking about and would appreciate it if someone could explain it in armchair terms.
At least now I know what computer illiterates feel like when I talk to them.
(it ain't my fault, my physics teacher was too attractive for 16-year-old boys to actually pay attention to what she *said*
Yea! At last someone voices the opinion I've held since my early days at the Commodore Pet.
Programming can be art, especially if it is hobbyist code (or is "open source code" the politically correct term for hobbyist code these days? I remember when *all* code was open source by default
Sure I design code to be fast and efficient. But given a near negligible difference in performance between nice artistic code and nasty obtuse code I choose nice every time.
What makes code "nice" and "artistic"? Well, human readability first and foremost. Computer's can't appreciate art so the ONLY things appreciating "artistic" code are humans. Well commented code can be art. Multi-component systems, which have an overall holds-it-all-together style can be art. Logical code can be art (you may ask "how can code be illogical?"; I say ask a COBOL programmer). Neatly laid out code can be art. All these kinds of frills are SOLEY for us humans' benefit; most of these frills are stripped out when the source code meets the compiler.
Examples of "non-artistic" code include using different variable names to refer to the same thing; indentation nightmares; unnecisarily obfuscated code (as opposed to neat concise tricks); poorly commented code; illogically or poorly structured code... the list goes on.
I feel appreciated now! Someone else has realised that my job cannot be done by robots!
I see we still haven't trained Jon to write proper HTML yet. Is it me or are all the closing double quotes not displaying on our browsers?
Other than that a good article, actually. I liked it.
I'm confused. Is Socket 370 the same as Socket 7?
(How many programmers does it take to change a lightbulb? None, it's a hardware issue, call technical support)