"The idea goes back to 1991. Our being exposed to the radio in a wide variety of daily situations - we listen to the radio at our offices, in our cars, at restaurants, via cable, via satellite, etc.- calls for a measuring device that can be carried along as a matter of course and without impairing one's movements. The measuring system must be joined to the person. The solution: a wristwatch! [...]
The development of this complex radio audience research system has been made possible by the impressive interdisciplinary cooperation of the various partners involved in the project, which was supported by the Swiss Commission for Technology and Innovation (CTI) and the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation."
I wrote Linux. It's true! Or rather, God did. And he coded it in Hebrew and Greek. I discovered this while working on a secret research project, to discover -- using Bible code -- the true cause of the sinking of the Titanic.
Try it yourself! Take every 1,342nd character from the King James Bible beginning Exodus 14:32, transliterate into the 8-bit bytes using a base26 algorithm, and you have a tar file containing the Linux 2.2.12 source code.
Not quite what you mean, but interesting none the less: Spamradio. Carefully selected spam set to mesmerizing Ambient tunes - who said that spam has no value?
By the way, the Spamradio guys are in need of Icecast relays to keep them running. (I have no connection to Spamradio - I just listen to it from time to time and think they run a good website).
Here's an online version of the c't article I mentioned (sans pictures). Quoting from it:
"Definitiv bestätigt hat Intel jedoch nur, dass die Entwicklung des geplanten Prescott-Nachfolgers mit Codenamen Tejas sowie seines Workstation-Kollegen Jawhawk eingestellt wurde. Stattdessen soll ein echter Doppelprozessor, also ein Prozessor mit zwei physischen Kernen auf dem Chip, im nächsten Jahr die Desktops bevölkern. Allerdings wollten die Kalifornier noch nicht zugeben, was alle Internet-Spatzen von den Websites zwitschern, nämlich dass es sich hierbei nicht um einen Nachfahr der in Oregon entwickelten Pentium-4-Linie, sondern um einen Spross aus der israelischen Design-Schule in Haifa handeln soll."
Rough translation (excuse my English):
"Intel has only acknowledged that development of the Prescott successor Tejas and its workstation-brethren Jayhawk has been discontinued. Instead, a true dual processor - a processor with two physical cores on the chip - will populate desktop PCs next year. The californians were reluctant to admit what many are speculating about - namely, that this probably won't be a descendant of the Pentium-4 line developed in Oregon, but a child of the
israelian design school in Haifa."
Further down in the article they mention Pentium-M designer Shmuel "Mooly" Eden, who has been transferred to Oregon some time ago.
Indeed, the outlook for AMD looks good given their roadmap and Intel's problems:
The "Prescott" P4 got mostly negative reviews, c't Magazine mentions in their current issue that Tejas (Prescott's planned successor) is being scrapped
For all the money they invested into Itanium, they seem to be lacking a coherent strategy for the architecture (or if they have one, they're not talking about it)
Their new processor rating and the power requirements of the Prescott line may be an indication that they cannot continue to crank up the clock on the CPUs any longer (GHz being the primary sales generator) without running into major problems with leak currents
AMD has processors which are looking more interesting to businesses than the previous CPUs, plus they have taken the lead in 64-bit processors for desktops and have dual core CPUs in the pipeline (heh)
It will be interesting to see how Intel responds to these challenges - c't speculates that the future Pentiums will use the architecture they have in the Pentium M line (developed in Israel). If they're smart they'll introduce a dual core CPU based on the Pentium M architecture, if AMD is smart they'll modify their existing designs and beat intel to the punch again.
Speaking as a business user, I'd welcome an emphasis on ergonomics and environmental concerns over raw speed. I'd rather have silent systems that do not overload the air conditioning with enormous amounts of heat than screamers which spend 99.9 % of their time waiting for the user to press a key anyway.
While we're at it, let's not forget that the bombes at Bletchley Park were a refinement on a Polish design. Turing made enormous improvements to it, but he was able to build on years of groundbreaking research by Rejewski and others in Poland.
> "cheap but good enough" almost always manages to beat "expensive and technically superior."
RDRAM was "technically superior" in theory, but as far as I remember the supposed performance benefits didn't have a significant enough impact on total system performance with the then-current chipsets to justify the huge price difference.
RDRAM looked promising at first, with Intel as the primary backer, but Rambus and Intel thourougly screwed up its introduction. This is how I remember it:
1. RDRAM was hideously expensive 2. Rambus used a "submarine patent" and got the whole DRAM industry up in arms about that 3. Price/performance ratio was bad 4. Chipsets with RDRAM support were expensive and only Intel jumped on the bandwagon initially (and with rather buggy chipsets to boot) 5. As a result, DDR-SDRAM was quickly announced, and RDRAM was history
I suppose the next steps would be:
6. Realize that your product is deader than a doornail 7. Sue the hell out of every major player in the industry 8. PROFIT???
To me, this looks more like the rest of the industry protecting themselves against Rambus' predatory practices and general ineptitude to bring a promising product to market. Perhaps suing Infineon and others wasn't the most brilliant move if they wanted to make RDRAM a success?
Actually, Google track every click from their search results using an image load on the mousedown event of the hyperlink. View the source to a Google results page to see it.
I just did that (using Mozilla 1.6 with JavaScript active), and I can see no evidence for this in the html source returned by Google. Care to elaborate? I'm not a scripting wizard, so bear with me if I overlooked something obvious.
Google may choose to exhibit its search results in the form of a "URL redirecter." When Google uses a URL redirecter, if you click on a URL from a search result, information about the click is sent to Google, and Google in turn sends you to the site you clicked on. Google uses this URL information to understand and improve the quality of Google's search technology. For instance, Google uses this information to determine how often users are satisfied with the first result of a query and how often they proceed to later results.
I see this behavior very rarely, perhaps once every six months. Most other search engines are far more intrusive, tracking every click on search results by way of URL redirection.
Interview with Lawrence Canter
on
Happy Spamiversary!
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Quoting from it: ----- How many people received the "Green Card Lottery" spam? Did you generate any business from it? It was in the tens of thousands. Yes, we generated a lot of business. The best I can recall we probably made somewhere between $100,000 to $200,000 related to that--which wasn't remarkable in itself, except that the cost of doing it was negligible. -----
Linus: "I'm most certainly going to continue to support it, until it either dies out or merges with something else. That doesn't necessarily mean I'll make weekly patches for the rest of my life, but hopefully they won't be needed as much when things stabilize." 8-)
> there is no more telecom monopoly here since 7 or 8 years...
Except for the infamous "last mile", of course. I still get a monthly bill from Swisscom for their crummy base service (no CLIP/CLIR, protecting their outdated ISDN infrastructure etc.), even though I use other providers for both POTS and mobile... (can't switch to Cablecom for POTS, unfortunately)
>Thing is it's been possible to buy totally anonymous GSM cards here for ages (8 years or so)
that's no more the case since years (but I can't say since when exactly, not so long, maybe 3 years ago).
Not true. I bought one prepaid card last summer when I canceled my mobile phone subscription, and got a second one with a cheap simlocked SE T100 (my backup phone) in January this year. Never had to give any form of ID or even provide an address for both SIMs.
Legislation regarding the registration of prepaid cards was discussed and almost ratified a few years ago (I'm too lazy to look it up), then taken up again in 2003 (page in German).
Swisscom is essential Vodafone Switzerland which is part of Vodafone Global one of the largest, if not the largest mobile network provider, in the world.
Swisscom is the privatized (since 1998) communications technology branch of former Swiss state monopolist "PTT". They cooperate with Vodafone on a "mobile multimedia portal" since 2001, but they do not belong to Vodafone in any way.
Greetings from Switzerland, Raymond
Re:In former times they said ...
on
See Spot Surf
·
· Score: 1
Here's the famous cartoon from the New Yorker which originated the phrase "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog":
"In April, Swedish furniture giant Ikea explains that a children's bunk bed called the Gutvik is named for "a tiny town in Sweden." Announcing that bit of etymology becomes necessary when Germans point out that, in their neck of the woods, the word sounds like a phrase that means "good f***." Ikea yanks the Gutvik from its catalogs in Germany."
While they were at it, they apparently also yanked the "Rekdal" bed frame from their product line for obvious reasons (I'm not making this up).
I bet those two beds sold like hotcakes in the small Austrian town of Fucking, though...
>If mozilla were be the most popular browser then it would have the most exploits.
I disagree. Exploits are not generated by market share but are side-effects of bad design decisions (one word: ActiveX), bad coding practices, insufficent code reviews, clueless management ("I say we ship it, and I'm the boss!") etc.
If Mozilla were the most popular browser, it would certainly get more attention from the black hat scene, and whatever weaknesses are lurking in the code would be exploited. Whether the number of exploits would be bigger than IE's is pure conjecture, since Mozilla's market share is still way lower than Interner Explorer's.
However, the Mozilla team has an excellent track record when it comes to patching known vulnerabilities, while Microsoft used to treat them like dead raccoons. To be fair, they have improved a little in that regard, but there is a reason why this page has been "temporarily suspended", and it's not that there are no unpatched vulnerabilities in IE left for Microsoft to patch...
> It's not how big your hard drive is, it's how much RAM you have.;)
RAM
This is a shorthand way of referring to "ROM." The unit of measurement for RAM is the "MEG," which stands for a certain amount of "RAM." The function of RAM is to give guys a way of deciding whose computer has the biggest, studliest, most tumescent MEMORY. This is important, because with today's complex software, the more memory a computer has, the faster it can produce error messages. So the bottom line is, if you're a guy, you cannot have enough RAM. BILL GATES currently has over 743 billion "megs" of RAM, and he still routinely feels the need to stuff a ZUCCHINI in his UNDERWEAR.
You should use the preceding terms whenever you have to "interface" with computer experts. For example, if you're purchasing a new computer, you want to use as many of these terms as possible, so that store personnel will realize that they're dealing with a person who has a high level of technical expertise:
STORE PERSONNEL: May I help you? YOU: I'm looking for a "hard drive" with plenty of "RAM" in the "megahertz." STORE PERSONNEL: You want the computer store next door. This is a supermarket. YOU: Let me see your "zucchini." ---- (Dave Barry: "Dave Barry in Cyberspace")
Slashdot Mirror
Quote, from one Mark Adams:
I wonder how they're going to repair this one? (Shipped with UPS, nota bene)
Here's the associated Slashdot story.
By the way, the Spamradio guys are in need of Icecast relays to keep them running. (I have no connection to Spamradio - I just listen to it from time to time and think they run a good website).
> I guess they are now wondering what a Slashdotting sounds like? Anyone wants to guess?
A swarm of Locusts invading a luscious garden immediately comes to mind...
This should also be pretty close, I guess.
> That would be like "fixing" Windows 95 with Windows ME.
I reckon that's quite appropriate, given that one of the meanings of "to fix" is "to spay or castrate" according to this
...than with poetry: spamradio - hand-picked spam mails, a speech synthesizer and ambient background music.
I sometimes listen to it during coding sprees late at night, eerie but cool.
It will be interesting to see how Intel responds to these challenges - c't speculates that the future Pentiums will use the architecture they have in the Pentium M line (developed in Israel). If they're smart they'll introduce a dual core CPU based on the Pentium M architecture, if AMD is smart they'll modify their existing designs and beat intel to the punch again.
Speaking as a business user, I'd welcome an emphasis on ergonomics and environmental concerns over raw speed. I'd rather have silent systems that do not overload the air conditioning with enormous amounts of heat than screamers which spend 99.9 % of their time waiting for the user to press a key anyway.
While we're at it, let's not forget that the bombes at Bletchley Park were a refinement on a Polish design. Turing made enormous improvements to it, but he was able to build on years of groundbreaking research by Rejewski and others in Poland.
Your wish is my command:(stolen from someone's Usenet sig)
"With a castle that big, do you think maybe Lord Farquaad is trying to compensate for something?"
Shrek
> "cheap but good enough" almost always manages to beat "expensive and technically superior."
RDRAM was "technically superior" in theory, but as far as I remember the supposed performance benefits didn't have a significant enough impact on total system performance with the then-current chipsets to justify the huge price difference.
RDRAM looked promising at first, with Intel as the primary backer, but Rambus and Intel thourougly screwed up its introduction. This is how I remember it:
1. RDRAM was hideously expensive
2. Rambus used a "submarine patent" and got the whole DRAM industry up in arms about that
3. Price/performance ratio was bad
4. Chipsets with RDRAM support were expensive and only Intel jumped on the bandwagon initially (and with rather buggy chipsets to boot)
5. As a result, DDR-SDRAM was quickly announced, and RDRAM was history
I suppose the next steps would be:
6. Realize that your product is deader than a doornail
7. Sue the hell out of every major player in the industry
8. PROFIT???
To me, this looks more like the rest of the industry protecting themselves against Rambus' predatory practices and general ineptitude to bring a promising product to market. Perhaps suing Infineon and others wasn't the most brilliant move if they wanted to make RDRAM a success?
According to their privacy policy
I see this behavior very rarely, perhaps once every six months. Most other search engines are far more intrusive, tracking every click on search results by way of URL redirection.
Here
Quoting from it:
-----
How many people received the "Green Card Lottery" spam? Did you generate any business from it?
It was in the tens of thousands. Yes, we generated a lot of business. The best I can recall we probably made somewhere between $100,000 to $200,000 related to that--which wasn't remarkable in itself, except that the cost of doing it was negligible.
-----
Let's hope it will have a little more impact on Microsoft's business practices than the last judgment
LinuxNews, October 18-26, 1992 (scroll down to the "Interview" section).
Linus: "I'm most certainly going to continue to support it, until it either dies out or merges with something else. That doesn't necessarily mean I'll make weekly patches for the rest of my life, but hopefully they won't be needed as much when things stabilize." 8-)
> there is no more telecom monopoly here since 7 or 8 years...
Except for the infamous "last mile", of course. I still get a monthly bill from Swisscom for their crummy base service (no CLIP/CLIR, protecting their outdated ISDN infrastructure etc.), even though I use other providers for both POTS and mobile... (can't switch to Cablecom for POTS, unfortunately)
>Thing is it's been possible to buy totally anonymous GSM cards here for ages (8 years or so)
that's no more the case since years (but I can't say since when exactly, not so long, maybe 3 years ago).
Not true. I bought one prepaid card last summer when I canceled my mobile phone subscription, and got a second one with a cheap simlocked SE T100 (my backup phone) in January this year. Never had to give any form of ID or even provide an address for both SIMs.
Legislation regarding the registration of prepaid cards was discussed and almost ratified a few years ago (I'm too lazy to look it up), then taken up again in 2003 (page in German).
Greetings from Zurich,
Raymond
Greetings from Switzerland,
Raymond
Here's the famous cartoon from the New Yorker which originated the phrase "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog":
n ternet-dog.html
http://www.wmich.edu/library/searchpath/mod5/18-i
I bet those two beds sold like hotcakes in the small Austrian town of Fucking, though...
>If mozilla were be the most popular browser then it would have the most exploits.
I disagree. Exploits are not generated by market share but are side-effects of bad design decisions (one word: ActiveX), bad coding practices, insufficent code reviews, clueless management ("I say we ship it, and I'm the boss!") etc.
If Mozilla were the most popular browser, it would certainly get more attention from the black hat scene, and whatever weaknesses are lurking in the code would be exploited. Whether the number of exploits would be bigger than IE's is pure conjecture, since Mozilla's market share is still way lower than Interner Explorer's.
However, the Mozilla team has an excellent track record when it comes to patching known vulnerabilities, while Microsoft used to treat them like dead raccoons. To be fair, they have improved a little in that regard, but there is a reason why this page has been "temporarily suspended", and it's not that there are no unpatched vulnerabilities in IE left for Microsoft to patch...
Some food for thought, more, even more - you get the idea.
> It's not how big your hard drive is, it's how much RAM you have. ;)
RAM
This is a shorthand way of referring to "ROM." The unit of measurement for RAM is the "MEG," which stands for a certain amount of "RAM." The function of RAM is to give guys a way of deciding whose computer has the biggest, studliest, most tumescent MEMORY. This is important, because with today's complex software, the more memory a computer has, the faster it can produce error messages. So the bottom line is, if you're a guy, you cannot have enough RAM. BILL GATES currently has over 743 billion "megs" of RAM, and he still routinely feels the need to stuff a ZUCCHINI in his UNDERWEAR.
You should use the preceding terms whenever you have to "interface" with computer experts. For example, if you're purchasing a new computer, you want to use as many of these terms as possible, so that store personnel will realize that they're dealing with a person who has a high level of technical expertise:
STORE PERSONNEL: May I help you?
YOU: I'm looking for a "hard drive" with plenty of "RAM" in the "megahertz."
STORE PERSONNEL: You want the computer store next door. This is a supermarket.
YOU: Let me see your "zucchini."
----
(Dave Barry: "Dave Barry in Cyberspace")