For happy surfing: both bluetooth and GPRS. Keep the phone in your pocket, when surfing the net with GPRS. Try that with infrared. Unfortunately, bluetooth is often missing on GPRS phones (even on the new 7250).
You can download photographs to the 6100, which supports MMS. Cool. But even way cooler would be if digital cameras would come with bluetooth, so you can download a (downsized) picture straight from your camera into your bluetooth phone, and send them as an MMS.
Multiplayer games, based on bluetooth.
The ability to switch the phone in a mode where it does not send out any signals, but still allowing me to use all other functions such as calendar, alarm, stopwatch, calculator, games, and soon camera. Useful for in places where use of a mobile is not allowed such as planes.br>
It is very hard to use optical discs for mobile storage, especially in consumer electronics like videocameras. They need to be highly shock-resistive.
For optical storage to work, the write head must be very stable. Unfortunately, the head of an optical storage device is order of magnitudes heavier than that of a harddisk, which makes it very hard to keep it stable. Even with this somewhat lighter head they mention in the article.
Remember the old portable cd-players, how they skipped very easily. New players read ahead now in buffers to avoid skipping. But obviously the same technology can not be used for writing.
The only thing in videocameras to replace tape, will be Flash memory. The next generation will have capacities up to 8 GB.
We already have this capacity: (re)writable DVDs. So the main compelling advantage must come from the size and maybe energy usage.
It is small, but Flash memory is even smaller. Let's say the drive will be commercially available in 1 year (and then I think I'm being optimistic.) By that time flash storage will already start to come close to these capacities. For instance, the successor of the proprietary Sony Memorystick and XD card technologies by Fuji and Olympus can go up to 8 GB. Flash is technically superior to optical storage (no moving parts, less energy consumption) but optical storage is far cheaper. But most people would store their flash memory on their harddisks anyway.
I am wearing lenses for over 10 years now. I 've got -6.0 / -5.75, no cylinder (or other abberations). I got interested in LASIK treatment and read alot about it. I even made an appointment for treatment, but in the end I decided not to do it.
The reason: when looking at the risk / reward, I figured it was not worth it. I am wearing pretty comfortable lenses (Bausch & Lomb PureVision. You won't find information on the Bausch & Lomb site; because of a patent issue the lenses are not allowed for sale in the US). These lenses are designed so you can wear them for 30 days without interruption. I don't have to take them out at night, or put them in in the morning. Just replace them once a month. They are so comfortable that I hardly notice that they are there.
So the "reward" for LASIK surgery is very small. The risk of having reduced night vision and seeing halo's (which is large when you have large pupils at night and -6.0 like me) does not outweigh the small benefits. I will at least wait for the treatment method to improve (ie. no more halo's) and the long-term effects to become more well known.
Don't know what IM client you used, but I use Trillian, and it does archive things for me.
So you want to use an archived chat session to use as document to refer back to. Good luck. Chat sessions have less structure and are much more unreadable than a carefully written e-mail. I prefer someone's comments in a well written e-mail over a chat session, thank you very much.
OK, I have a little exercise for you. Read the following out loud on th ephone, and imagine someone on th other end trying to transpose this back into text:
for(int index = 0; index < list.length; index ++) {
x &= ((Integer)list.get(index)) << index;
}
Don't be foolish. You would send the code snippet by e-mail, as I already stated. Then discuss over the phone. Much faster than having to type everything.
And what of presence? Do you have some way of known if the person you immediately need is available on the other end?
Another non-argument. With IM, you can't be sure either. Sure, IM has features that show someone being away if he's idle for a certain period, typically 10 minutes (I think 10 minutes is a reasonable setting for most people). You can not be sure if a person is available, because it only shows a status equivalent to being "away" after this idle period. Unless ofcourse a person uses the "away" facility of his IM (showing he's not at his computer at the moment). But my experience is that most people don't bother to explicitly click the "away" button. In short, don't tell me that everyone that is listed as on-line, is also really at his computer. In many cases the person is not. Just as with the phone. A benefit of using the phone is that you get someone on the phone (a co-worker, or the reception) who can most often tell you where the person that you are trying to reach is, and how long it will take him to get back. It is very useful to find out that the person you are looking for is in a meeting for the next 3 hours.
In e-mail there is an elegant way of initiating contact send a short e-mail, subject "call me" and go on with something else.
Especially in combination of a tool like VNC
So you want people to mix-and-mach tools to try and come close to something that a new paradigm, IM, does perfectly well?
I didn't know you could look at someone elses screen and take over mouse and keyboard with IM. This is news to me. Seriously, in some cases it can be a great help, for instance when configuring settings or showing how to use a certain feature in a program. Nothing beats it.
Within weeks, the IT guys were chatting for hours per day with the girls in the office
And they never did this with the phone?
No. They don't dare. The stupid things they are conversating about, the stupid jokes they make with IM, they won't do that out loud. And it would attract too much attention. It would be all too obvious from the conversation that they were chit-chatting and keeping someone from doing their work.
Or send each other e-mails?
Yes, happens. But much less. It's simply not as much fun, I guess.
IM just made it so convenient that they started doing something they had so little drive to do before IM lowered the hurdle?
Yes. It is exactly as you state. IM lowered the hurdle, just as IM is lowering the hurdle for so many young people to contact and communicate to others. Save from behind the screen and keyboard, people dare alot more than in e-mail, real life or over the phone. This is the main reason why IM is such a success, IMO. The main reason. Main. Not only.
Then you start talking about communication costs and so on. This is all irrelevant, phone costs are not significant compared to most companies overall costs. And if productivity is hurt, as in my experience it clearly is, then this gets expensive really quickly.
Then you mention some esoteric cases in which IM is a wonderful tool. Well, I have got news for you: most companies are different than the special cases you describe. Most are normal companies with offices spread over a region, and they may or may not be connected by a WAN.
IM in companies: a bad idea
on
Gaim For Windows
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· Score: 4, Informative
[ Slightly off-topic ]
I'm somewhat sceptic to Instant Messaging in companies. I've seen it fail at our company, where they insisted to try it out.
I see it like this: if you have a message for someone and you don't need an instant reply, e-mail is perfect. If you want to send code snippets, or need to transfer information that is somewhat complicated, use e-mail. It enables you to write down everything in a structured way and the receiver can archive the message for later retrieval.
If you want an instant reply, because you need to discuss something, USE THE PHONE. It is much faster than typing, no matter how fast you type. It is much more convenient, you can exchange information really quickly. Especially in combination of a tool like VNC, which enables you to see eachothers screen and take over mouse and keyboard remotely.
In our case there was another unfortunate side-effect of IMing. Within weeks, the IT guys were chatting for hours per day with the girls in the office. Some of them often had three chat sessions open simultaneously. Productivity dropped significantly.
Artificially created heroes have existed for ages. We all know Spiderman, Tom & Jerry, Roger Rabbit and Betty Boop. I don't see much of a difference here, except maybe the genre in which the hero operates. Cartoons characters are often funny, CG heroes are often tough.
Besides, Lara Croft the Movie was awful. I felt ripped off, if only because the actual boobs in the movie were not as big as they promised in their promotional material.
Music has copyright on it. Get used to it. How would you feel if you produced a hit one day, it's played everywhere, but instead of a lot of money, you only receive a few pats on the back?
Radio stations have to pay to be able to air music. So do supermarkets, discotheques, or anyone that plays copyrighted music for large audiences. So, why should websites all of a sudden form an exception?
This "music should be for free" attitude has to change. Pirating music you didn't pay for is simply theft, just as software piracy is. There's no other way I can see it, really. Just because it's easy to pirate someone's music, doesn't make it legal.
Having to decide what route to take for our company, I have followed the discussion with great interest. Our company uses IIS and Cold Fusion, and we are hitting the wall, because Cold Fusion lacks many features of a real programming language. Our company has quite some backoffice processes that our now done mainly using CF, which is obviously not the right tool for this.
So I've looked into open source solutions, with Linux + Apache + PHP (frontend)/Java (backend) as the most promising solution. On top of stability and speed of the Linux/Apache combo, PHP gets you the development speed needed to set up webpages, and Java would get us a full blown programming language for the business logic.
However, I quickly found out that this route is not realistic. We are a small company, we do not have a big IT department. To run the Linux alternative right, a lot of expertise is needed, much more than running an NT platform. Setting up Apache + SSL + PHP + Java is already a much more complicated and time consuming exercise than setting up NT + CF + Java. Maintaining it adequatly requires deep knowledge and lots of experience with Unix. Not to mention keeping track of all the little hacks here and there, the tricks that can be so conveniently implemented since everything is open source and flexible, but which create a maintenance nightmare. To get and keep this kind of knowledge inside the company and redundantly is difficult when you want to have a small IT dep. Granted, you get much more flexibility. But at big price. Granted, you get more speed and stability, but this can also be achieved using different means such as a simple load balancer. Hardware wise we have to be redundant already anyway.
Add to this that NT is narrowing the gap in terms of speed and stability with Linux anyway. Unless you have very specific needs, IIS is good enough, at least for us it is.
The coming of.NET is the final aspect. Having a small IT dep, we are trying very hard to limit the number of languages and different systems as much as we can. C-sharp can be used for any task under NT, from web page programming up to handling backoffice logic, and writing DLLs, etc. etc. This might also be true for Java, but C# is simply a newer, cleaner and better instance of java. The philosophy behind.NET is also very appealing. Being able to generate browser specific code seamlessly, being able to design web applications as if it were regular applications which happen to have a web-frontend, being able to use all the features of the latest Explorers which are now predominant, while automatically being compatible with other browsers are huge benefits. Sure, there will be tools that can do this or parts of this for java based solutions as well. But the advantage of.NET is that it is one complete, integrated solution, having heavyweight MS behind it.
The disadvantage of.NET is ofcourse that we are tying ourselfs into NT for a long time to come. But you can argue about exactly how bad that is, when you consider the alternatives. I expect that many companies will jump the.NET bandwagon, which creates a power strong enough to avoid a stranglehold of any kind by MS.
So our conclusion is to go with.NET and stay with NT. Our IT dep is small. Small means lower costs. We need solutions that are easy to maintain and yet powerful. We need to be able to develop quickly. We want to keep the number of different components and languages to a minimum. DotNET simply fits the bill.
With.NET, we'll soon be at the mercy of MS. Sure, it will be nice and compatible with all browsers in the beginning. But as soon as they have a significant marketshare, MS can change the rules of the game. They can shut down support for a specific browser. They can shut down support for all browsers except MS ones ("sorry people, we will no longer support Opera 7.2, since it hasn't got ").
Netscape and friends will then be obsolete. It's extend and embrace, in a way.
Sorry for being somewhat off-topic.
With.NET, we'll soon be at the mercy of MS. Sure, it will be nice and compatible with all browsers in the beginning. But as soon as they have a significant marketshare, MS can change the rules of the game. They can shut down support for a specific browser. They can shut down support for all browsers except MS ones ("sorry people, we will no longer support Opera 7.2, since it hasn't got ").
Netscape and friends will then be obsolete. It's extend and embrace, in a way.
Maybe it's simply the resistance of interstellar dust that slows the spacecrafts down. During its travel, it must have bumped into billions of particles that slow down the spacecraft. Although there may be only a few particles per cubic meter, after the billions of km's the spacecrafts have travelled, I can imagine that they add up and become significant.
Added to that, there may be more gas in the outer regions of the solar system.
Seldomly you see an article containing so little information.
From their FAQ:
How is the PowerPad different from conventional rechargeable batteries?
We believe that electrofuel's Lithium Ion SuperPolymer technology is unique in that it is able to deliver higher energy density in smaller and more lightweight forms than any other commercially available battery technologies
What run time can I expect to achieve with my notebook?
Electrofuel has tested the PowerPad 160 with Ziff-Davis BatteryMark 3.0 simulation software and has achieved 16 hours of run-time, with the notebook's Windows 95 Power Management set to its most efficient battery use. Our internal tests indicate that the PowerPad160 has approximately 160 watt-hours of energy capacity and enables users to run most laptops for 12 to 16 hours, compared to single batteries typically installed in portable computers, which generally have between 30-40 watt hours and 2 to 4 hour run-times. This simulation package runs through various software programs to simulate "regular use." The actual run-time will vary depending on the type of software used, the type of screen, etc. For instance, continuous running of the DVD will reduce the run-time achieved due to the greater consumption of energy by this application.
This made me curious for the 7 hats case. According to the article, since the number of hats is a power of two minus one (2**3 - 1), they claim there is a strategy that is succesful for 7 out of 8 times played. Ok, let's have a look.
We have 7 hats. The following combinations can occur.
Yep, I consider the order of the hats irrelevant. The article does not reveal if this assumption is correct; from what I found for this case I guess order is relevant. See my remarks at the end.
Let X be a hat wearer.
Case 1: X sees only 1 color of hats (6r or 6b)
Case 2: X sees a distribution of 5/1 (5r/1b or 5b/1r)
Case 3: X sees a distribution of 4/2 (4r/2b or 4b/2r)
Case 4: X sees a distribution of 3/3 (3r/3b)
Now, there are not many strategies to choose from, really. For either case, one can choose guess I'm red, guess I'm blue or pass. You could easily check them one by one and see which strategy works best. For instance, I tried (and I strongly believe this is optimal):
Case 1: if 6r, choose b, if 6b, choose r
Case 2: pass
Case 3: if 4r, choose b, if 4b, choose r
Case 4: pass
This strategy makes sure everyone guesses wrong for the two cases that have only one permutation (ie. 7b/0r and 7r/0b, Case 1 applies), which is the best achievable result. Because consider: we did 14 wrong guesses, but lost in only 2 out of 128 cases (there are 2**7 = 128 permutations for 7 hats). Knowing that on the average, 50% of our guesses will be wrong, ditching 14/128 of them while loosing only twice is a good start.
At the same time, this strategy makes sure that for 4r/3b and 3r/4b, we win. Since 4r/3b renders the most permutations (35 possible permutations for each), we guess right for 70 out of 128 permutations.
A closer look on this: (Cases repeated from above for convenience)
Case 1: X sees 6r/0b => b; or 6b/0r => r
Case 2: X sees 5r/1b or 5b/1r; pass
Case 3: X sees 4r/2b => b; or 4b/2r => r
Case 4: X sees 3r/3b; pass
rrrrrrr (7r/0b)
=> Case 1; everyone guessses b, all lose
====> (7 0) = 1 combination exists for this case
rrrrrrb (6r/1b)
=> for the r's, Case 2 applies (5r/1b) so they pass
=> for the b, Case 1 applies, so it guesses b (and is right)
====> (7 1) = 7 combinations exist for this case
rrrrrbb (5r/2b)
=> for the r's, Case 3 applies (4r seen), they choose r (wrong)
=> for the b's, Case 2 applies, they pass (irrelevant)
====> (7 2) = 21 combinations exist for this case (ouch)
rrrrbbb (4r/3b)
=> for the r's, Case 4 applies, they pass
=> for the b's, Case 3 applies, they choose r (right)
====> (7 3) = 35 combinations exist for this case (wheee!)
repeat above, but exchange the colors. Now for the totals:
Right: 84
Wrong: 44
Total percentage: 84/128 = 66% or about 2/3.
Conclusion: in about 2/3 of the cases the above strategy wins. Now the problem is, I don't really see how to improve on this. But the article claims that a strategy exists that wins 7 out of 8 times or 88%. That would would match with a strategy that is losing for the 7r, 7b 6r/1b and 1r/6b cases, and winning for the 5r/2b, 2b/5r, 4r/3b and 4b/3r cases. I don't think there is such a strategy.
The only thing that I can imagine is that hat wearer X gets a piece of paper which shows information like this:
rrXbrbbr
Not only can he see how many red/blue hats there are, but also their relative locations, and his own. This would probably open up a host of other strategies.
If not, please someone explain how to improve on the above strategy. I'm curious. In any case, a nice problem. It surprised me that the Slashdot crowd did not seem willing to take on this problem for other than the 3 hats case, which is why I did it myself.
The ability to filter noise and tune in on information that you want is exactly what democracy is all about. The ability that the Net gives you to voice your own opinion AND get feedback helps people to be well informed.
People have a certain mindset and believes, and are therefore receptive only for a certain range of thoughts and ideas. People tend to filter out all information that conflicts with their mindset. It's like watching a FOX television show saying the moonlanding has never took place. Most people on Slashdot would simply not be open for this. So people do their own filtering.
On the other hand, people also tend to look actively for information that does agree with their mindset. Smart people continuously check their mindset against others and try to learn from that. The Net is the greatest tool for this, it offers all you can ask for to do this.
Just scanned their whitepaper (thx for the PDF version). They quickly mention router memory is not used. But then they go on without explaining what does store the data. It has to be stored somewhere. It can not be in the light signal.
Look at it this way. If there were no delays in the network, only optical repeaters, no routers, the signal would travel at the speed of light, and travel the 8000 km. in.027 secs. To put 10GB of data in that ring, you got.027 sec. You would need a speed of 375 GBytes / sec, divided over 8 wavelengths this would be 375 Gbits/sec per wavelength. Good luck! So the light signal alone simply can not store 10 GB.
Now, this ring has a latency of.1 sec instead of.027. This latency is introduced because of routers. Since the ring itself can only store.027 secs worth of data, the other.1 -.027 =.073 secs have to be stored somewhere else. And that can be in no other place than in the routers memory.
(Or have they invented optical repeaters that delay the speed of light and have a memory of their own?)
You could also buy 20 routers, hook them up with ethernet in a circle, pump around data through it as fast as you can, and enjoy an 'ethernet' drive at home. Be sure to buy routers with large buffers for increased storage!
This makes no sense at all. Also, the analogy with routers as the heads of a harddrive and the wavelengths as tracks is flawed.
Let's see, the ring is 5000 miles or roughly 8000 km. The signal takes.1 sec. Without any delays, the signal would travel the 8000 km in 8000 / 300000 = 0.027 sec. The delay comes from the routers that have to convert each packet to an electronic signal, read it, and convert it back to an optical signal. To be able to do this, a router has a buffer, so that it can store a couple of megs of data so it doesn't have to drop packets too soon. It buys the router some time to do it's decode / recode stuff. It is exactly this memory that is used as a 'disk drive'.
So just let's put in more routers, increase the latency of the signals, and thus increase the capacity of your "drive".
The suggestion that an optical signal stores any info, is very misleading.
Slashdot Mirror
For happy surfing: both bluetooth and GPRS. Keep the phone in your pocket, when surfing the net with GPRS. Try that with infrared. Unfortunately, bluetooth is often missing on GPRS phones (even on the new 7250).
You can download photographs to the 6100, which supports MMS. Cool. But even way cooler would be if digital cameras would come with bluetooth, so you can download a (downsized) picture straight from your camera into your bluetooth phone, and send them as an MMS.
Multiplayer games, based on bluetooth.
The ability to switch the phone in a mode where it does not send out any signals, but still allowing me to use all other functions such as calendar, alarm, stopwatch, calculator, games, and soon camera. Useful for in places where use of a mobile is not allowed such as planes.br>
That would suprise me.
It is very hard to use optical discs for mobile storage, especially in consumer electronics like videocameras. They need to be highly shock-resistive.
For optical storage to work, the write head must be very stable. Unfortunately, the head of an optical storage device is order of magnitudes heavier than that of a harddisk, which makes it very hard to keep it stable. Even with this somewhat lighter head they mention in the article.
Remember the old portable cd-players, how they skipped very easily. New players read ahead now in buffers to avoid skipping. But obviously the same technology can not be used for writing.
The only thing in videocameras to replace tape, will be Flash memory. The next generation will have capacities up to 8 GB.
We already have this capacity: (re)writable DVDs. So the main compelling advantage must come from the size and maybe energy usage.
It is small, but Flash memory is even smaller. Let's say the drive will be commercially available in 1 year (and then I think I'm being optimistic.) By that time flash storage will already start to come close to these capacities. For instance, the successor of the proprietary Sony Memorystick and XD card technologies by Fuji and Olympus can go up to 8 GB. Flash is technically superior to optical storage (no moving parts, less energy consumption) but optical storage is far cheaper. But most people would store their flash memory on their harddisks anyway.
I am wearing lenses for over 10 years now. I 've got -6.0 / -5.75, no cylinder (or other abberations). I got interested in LASIK treatment and read alot about it. I even made an appointment for treatment, but in the end I decided not to do it.
The reason: when looking at the risk / reward, I figured it was not worth it. I am wearing pretty comfortable lenses (Bausch & Lomb PureVision. You won't find information on the Bausch & Lomb site; because of a patent issue the lenses are not allowed for sale in the US). These lenses are designed so you can wear them for 30 days without interruption. I don't have to take them out at night, or put them in in the morning. Just replace them once a month. They are so comfortable that I hardly notice that they are there.
So the "reward" for LASIK surgery is very small. The risk of having reduced night vision and seeing halo's (which is large when you have large pupils at night and -6.0 like me) does not outweigh the small benefits. I will at least wait for the treatment method to improve (ie. no more halo's) and the long-term effects to become more well known.
Sigh.
archive the message for later retrieval.
Don't know what IM client you used, but I use Trillian, and it does archive things for me.
So you want to use an archived chat session to use as document to refer back to. Good luck. Chat sessions have less structure and are much more unreadable than a carefully written e-mail. I prefer someone's comments in a well written e-mail over a chat session, thank you very much.
OK, I have a little exercise for you. Read the following out loud on th ephone, and imagine someone on th other end trying to transpose this back into text: for(int index = 0; index < list.length; index ++) { x &= ((Integer)list.get(index)) << index; }
Don't be foolish. You would send the code snippet by e-mail, as I already stated. Then discuss over the phone. Much faster than having to type everything.
And what of presence? Do you have some way of known if the person you immediately need is available on the other end?
Another non-argument. With IM, you can't be sure either. Sure, IM has features that show someone being away if he's idle for a certain period, typically 10 minutes (I think 10 minutes is a reasonable setting for most people). You can not be sure if a person is available, because it only shows a status equivalent to being "away" after this idle period. Unless ofcourse a person uses the "away" facility of his IM (showing he's not at his computer at the moment). But my experience is that most people don't bother to explicitly click the "away" button. In short, don't tell me that everyone that is listed as on-line, is also really at his computer. In many cases the person is not. Just as with the phone. A benefit of using the phone is that you get someone on the phone (a co-worker, or the reception) who can most often tell you where the person that you are trying to reach is, and how long it will take him to get back. It is very useful to find out that the person you are looking for is in a meeting for the next 3 hours.
In e-mail there is an elegant way of initiating contact send a short e-mail, subject "call me" and go on with something else.
Especially in combination of a tool like VNC
So you want people to mix-and-mach tools to try and come close to something that a new paradigm, IM, does perfectly well?
I didn't know you could look at someone elses screen and take over mouse and keyboard with IM. This is news to me. Seriously, in some cases it can be a great help, for instance when configuring settings or showing how to use a certain feature in a program. Nothing beats it.
Within weeks, the IT guys were chatting for hours per day with the girls in the office
And they never did this with the phone?
No. They don't dare. The stupid things they are conversating about, the stupid jokes they make with IM, they won't do that out loud. And it would attract too much attention. It would be all too obvious from the conversation that they were chit-chatting and keeping someone from doing their work.
Or send each other e-mails?
Yes, happens. But much less. It's simply not as much fun, I guess.
IM just made it so convenient that they started doing something they had so little drive to do before IM lowered the hurdle?
Yes. It is exactly as you state. IM lowered the hurdle, just as IM is lowering the hurdle for so many young people to contact and communicate to others. Save from behind the screen and keyboard, people dare alot more than in e-mail, real life or over the phone. This is the main reason why IM is such a success, IMO. The main reason. Main. Not only.
Then you start talking about communication costs and so on. This is all irrelevant, phone costs are not significant compared to most companies overall costs. And if productivity is hurt, as in my experience it clearly is, then this gets expensive really quickly.
Then you mention some esoteric cases in which IM is a wonderful tool. Well, I have got news for you: most companies are different than the special cases you describe. Most are normal companies with offices spread over a region, and they may or may not be connected by a WAN.
[ Slightly off-topic ]
I'm somewhat sceptic to Instant Messaging in companies. I've seen it fail at our company, where they insisted to try it out.
I see it like this: if you have a message for someone and you don't need an instant reply, e-mail is perfect. If you want to send code snippets, or need to transfer information that is somewhat complicated, use e-mail. It enables you to write down everything in a structured way and the receiver can archive the message for later retrieval.
If you want an instant reply, because you need to discuss something, USE THE PHONE. It is much faster than typing, no matter how fast you type. It is much more convenient, you can exchange information really quickly. Especially in combination of a tool like VNC, which enables you to see eachothers screen and take over mouse and keyboard remotely.
In our case there was another unfortunate side-effect of IMing. Within weeks, the IT guys were chatting for hours per day with the girls in the office. Some of them often had three chat sessions open simultaneously. Productivity dropped significantly.
IM silently died.
Oops, ignore... this link already exists in the message submission.
A picture of the camera on the back.
Artificially created heroes have existed for ages. We all know Spiderman, Tom & Jerry, Roger Rabbit and Betty Boop. I don't see much of a difference here, except maybe the genre in which the hero operates. Cartoons characters are often funny, CG heroes are often tough.
Besides, Lara Croft the Movie was awful. I felt ripped off, if only because the actual boobs in the movie were not as big as they promised in their promotional material.
Music has copyright on it. Get used to it. How would you feel if you produced a hit one day, it's played everywhere, but instead of a lot of money, you only receive a few pats on the back?
Radio stations have to pay to be able to air music. So do supermarkets, discotheques, or anyone that plays copyrighted music for large audiences. So, why should websites all of a sudden form an exception?
This "music should be for free" attitude has to change. Pirating music you didn't pay for is simply theft, just as software piracy is. There's no other way I can see it, really. Just because it's easy to pirate someone's music, doesn't make it legal.
Having to decide what route to take for our company, I have followed the discussion with great interest. Our company uses IIS and Cold Fusion, and we are hitting the wall, because Cold Fusion lacks many features of a real programming language. Our company has quite some backoffice processes that our now done mainly using CF, which is obviously not the right tool for this.
.NET is the final aspect. Having a small IT dep, we are trying very hard to limit the number of languages and different systems as much as we can. C-sharp can be used for any task under NT, from web page programming up to handling backoffice logic, and writing DLLs, etc. etc. This might also be true for Java, but C# is simply a newer, cleaner and better instance of java. The philosophy behind .NET is also very appealing. Being able to generate browser specific code seamlessly, being able to design web applications as if it were regular applications which happen to have a web-frontend, being able to use all the features of the latest Explorers which are now predominant, while automatically being compatible with other browsers are huge benefits. Sure, there will be tools that can do this or parts of this for java based solutions as well. But the advantage of .NET is that it is one complete, integrated solution, having heavyweight MS behind it.
.NET is ofcourse that we are tying ourselfs into NT for a long time to come. But you can argue about exactly how bad that is, when you consider the alternatives. I expect that many companies will jump the .NET bandwagon, which creates a power strong enough to avoid a stranglehold of any kind by MS.
.NET and stay with NT. Our IT dep is small. Small means lower costs. We need solutions that are easy to maintain and yet powerful. We need to be able to develop quickly. We want to keep the number of different components and languages to a minimum. DotNET simply fits the bill.
So I've looked into open source solutions, with Linux + Apache + PHP (frontend)/Java (backend) as the most promising solution. On top of stability and speed of the Linux/Apache combo, PHP gets you the development speed needed to set up webpages, and Java would get us a full blown programming language for the business logic.
However, I quickly found out that this route is not realistic. We are a small company, we do not have a big IT department. To run the Linux alternative right, a lot of expertise is needed, much more than running an NT platform. Setting up Apache + SSL + PHP + Java is already a much more complicated and time consuming exercise than setting up NT + CF + Java. Maintaining it adequatly requires deep knowledge and lots of experience with Unix. Not to mention keeping track of all the little hacks here and there, the tricks that can be so conveniently implemented since everything is open source and flexible, but which create a maintenance nightmare. To get and keep this kind of knowledge inside the company and redundantly is difficult when you want to have a small IT dep. Granted, you get much more flexibility. But at big price. Granted, you get more speed and stability, but this can also be achieved using different means such as a simple load balancer. Hardware wise we have to be redundant already anyway.
Add to this that NT is narrowing the gap in terms of speed and stability with Linux anyway. Unless you have very specific needs, IIS is good enough, at least for us it is.
The coming of
The disadvantage of
So our conclusion is to go with
With .NET, we'll soon be at the mercy of MS. Sure, it will be nice and compatible with all browsers in the beginning. But as soon as they have a significant marketshare, MS can change the rules of the game. They can shut down support for a specific browser. They can shut down support for all browsers except MS ones ("sorry people, we will no longer support Opera 7.2, since it hasn't got ").
Netscape and friends will then be obsolete. It's extend and embrace, in a way.
Sorry for being somewhat off-topic.
With .NET, we'll soon be at the mercy of MS. Sure, it will be nice and compatible with all browsers in the beginning. But as soon as they have a significant marketshare, MS can change the rules of the game. They can shut down support for a specific browser. They can shut down support for all browsers except MS ones ("sorry people, we will no longer support Opera 7.2, since it hasn't got ").
Netscape and friends will then be obsolete. It's extend and embrace, in a way.
Sorry for being somewhat off-topic.
Maybe it's simply the resistance of interstellar dust that slows the spacecrafts down. During its travel, it must have bumped into billions of particles that slow down the spacecraft. Although there may be only a few particles per cubic meter, after the billions of km's the spacecrafts have travelled, I can imagine that they add up and become significant.
Added to that, there may be more gas in the outer regions of the solar system.
Seldomly you see an article containing so little information.
From their FAQ:
How is the PowerPad different from conventional rechargeable batteries?
We believe that electrofuel's Lithium Ion SuperPolymer technology is unique in that it is able to deliver higher energy density in smaller and more lightweight forms than any other commercially available battery technologies
What run time can I expect to achieve with my notebook?
Electrofuel has tested the PowerPad 160 with Ziff-Davis BatteryMark 3.0 simulation software and has achieved 16 hours of run-time, with the notebook's Windows 95 Power Management set to its most efficient battery use. Our internal tests indicate that the PowerPad160 has approximately 160 watt-hours of energy capacity and enables users to run most laptops for 12 to 16 hours, compared to single batteries typically installed in portable computers, which generally have between 30-40 watt hours and 2 to 4 hour run-times. This simulation package runs through various software programs to simulate "regular use." The actual run-time will vary depending on the type of software used, the type of screen, etc. For instance, continuous running of the DVD will reduce the run-time achieved due to the greater consumption of energy by this application.
This made me curious for the 7 hats case. According to the article, since the number of hats is a power of two minus one (2**3 - 1), they claim there is a strategy that is succesful for 7 out of 8 times played. Ok, let's have a look.
We have 7 hats. The following combinations can occur.
rrrrrrr
rrrrrrb
rrrrrbb
rrrrbbb
rrrbbbb
rrbbbbb
rbbbbbb
bbbbbbb
Yep, I consider the order of the hats irrelevant. The article does not reveal if this assumption is correct; from what I found for this case I guess order is relevant. See my remarks at the end.
Let X be a hat wearer.
Case 1: X sees only 1 color of hats (6r or 6b)
Case 2: X sees a distribution of 5/1 (5r/1b or 5b/1r)
Case 3: X sees a distribution of 4/2 (4r/2b or 4b/2r)
Case 4: X sees a distribution of 3/3 (3r/3b)
Now, there are not many strategies to choose from, really. For either case, one can choose guess I'm red, guess I'm blue or pass. You could easily check them one by one and see which strategy works best. For instance, I tried (and I strongly believe this is optimal):
Case 1: if 6r, choose b, if 6b, choose r
Case 2: pass
Case 3: if 4r, choose b, if 4b, choose r
Case 4: pass
This strategy makes sure everyone guesses wrong for the two cases that have only one permutation (ie. 7b/0r and 7r/0b, Case 1 applies), which is the best achievable result. Because consider: we did 14 wrong guesses, but lost in only 2 out of 128 cases (there are 2**7 = 128 permutations for 7 hats). Knowing that on the average, 50% of our guesses will be wrong, ditching 14/128 of them while loosing only twice is a good start.
At the same time, this strategy makes sure that for 4r/3b and 3r/4b, we win. Since 4r/3b renders the most permutations (35 possible permutations for each), we guess right for 70 out of 128 permutations.
A closer look on this: (Cases repeated from above for convenience)
Case 1: X sees 6r/0b => b; or 6b/0r => r
Case 2: X sees 5r/1b or 5b/1r; pass
Case 3: X sees 4r/2b => b; or 4b/2r => r
Case 4: X sees 3r/3b; pass
rrrrrrr (7r/0b)
=> Case 1; everyone guessses b, all lose
====> (7 0) = 1 combination exists for this case
rrrrrrb (6r/1b)
=> for the r's, Case 2 applies (5r/1b) so they pass
=> for the b, Case 1 applies, so it guesses b (and is right)
====> (7 1) = 7 combinations exist for this case
rrrrrbb (5r/2b)
=> for the r's, Case 3 applies (4r seen), they choose r (wrong)
=> for the b's, Case 2 applies, they pass (irrelevant)
====> (7 2) = 21 combinations exist for this case (ouch)
rrrrbbb (4r/3b)
=> for the r's, Case 4 applies, they pass
=> for the b's, Case 3 applies, they choose r (right)
====> (7 3) = 35 combinations exist for this case (wheee!)
repeat above, but exchange the colors. Now for the totals:
rrrrrrr / bbbbbbb: 2 wrong (2*(7 0))
rrrrrrb / bbbbbbr: 14 right (2*(7 1))
rrrrrbb / bbbbbrr: 42 wrong (2*(7 2))
rrrrbbb / bbbbrrr: 70 right (2*(7 3))
Right: 84
Wrong: 44
Total percentage: 84/128 = 66% or about 2/3.
Conclusion: in about 2/3 of the cases the above strategy wins. Now the problem is, I don't really see how to improve on this. But the article claims that a strategy exists that wins 7 out of 8 times or 88%. That would would match with a strategy that is losing for the 7r, 7b 6r/1b and 1r/6b cases, and winning for the 5r/2b, 2b/5r, 4r/3b and 4b/3r cases. I don't think there is such a strategy.
The only thing that I can imagine is that hat wearer X gets a piece of paper which shows information like this:
rrXbrbbr
Not only can he see how many red/blue hats there are, but also their relative locations, and his own. This would probably open up a host of other strategies.
If not, please someone explain how to improve on the above strategy. I'm curious. In any case, a nice problem. It surprised me that the Slashdot crowd did not seem willing to take on this problem for other than the 3 hats case, which is why I did it myself.
The ability to filter noise and tune in on information that you want is exactly what democracy is all about. The ability that the Net gives you to voice your own opinion AND get feedback helps people to be well informed.
People have a certain mindset and believes, and are therefore receptive only for a certain range of thoughts and ideas. People tend to filter out all information that conflicts with their mindset. It's like watching a FOX television show saying the moonlanding has never took place. Most people on Slashdot would simply not be open for this. So people do their own filtering.
On the other hand, people also tend to look actively for information that does agree with their mindset. Smart people continuously check their mindset against others and try to learn from that. The Net is the greatest tool for this, it offers all you can ask for to do this.
Just scanned their whitepaper (thx for the PDF version). They quickly mention router memory is not used. But then they go on without explaining what does store the data. It has to be stored somewhere. It can not be in the light signal.
.027 secs. To put 10GB of data in that ring, you got .027 sec. You would need a speed of 375 GBytes / sec, divided over 8 wavelengths this would be 375 Gbits/sec per wavelength. Good luck! So the light signal alone simply can not store 10 GB.
.1 sec instead of .027. This latency is introduced because of routers. Since the ring itself can only store .027 secs worth of data, the other .1 - .027 = .073 secs have to be stored somewhere else. And that can be in no other place than in the routers memory.
Look at it this way. If there were no delays in the network, only optical repeaters, no routers, the signal would travel at the speed of light, and travel the 8000 km. in
Now, this ring has a latency of
(Or have they invented optical repeaters that delay the speed of light and have a memory of their own?)
You could also buy 20 routers, hook them up with ethernet in a circle, pump around data through it as fast as you can, and enjoy an 'ethernet' drive at home. Be sure to buy routers with large buffers for increased storage!
This makes no sense at all. Also, the analogy with routers as the heads of a harddrive and the wavelengths as tracks is flawed.
.1 sec. Without any delays, the signal would travel the 8000 km in 8000 / 300000 = 0.027 sec. The delay comes from the routers that have to convert each packet to an electronic signal, read it, and convert it back to an optical signal. To be able to do this, a router has a buffer, so that it can store a couple of megs of data so it doesn't have to drop packets too soon. It buys the router some time to do it's decode / recode stuff. It is exactly this memory that is used as a 'disk drive'.
Let's see, the ring is 5000 miles or roughly 8000 km. The signal takes
So just let's put in more routers, increase the latency of the signals, and thus increase the capacity of your "drive".
The suggestion that an optical signal stores any info, is very misleading.