I agree with you. The differences are negligible to the average user. I can only think of one thing that might sway his choice: Does he want to ensure a minimum download speed for his users or does he want to provide for as many users as possible? If the latter is his preference, then again it doesn't matter, but if he wishes to partition his bandwidth to a limited number of users then perhaps anonymous FTP could be the solution.
Kind of like how a lot of Linux distribution sites/mirrors don't allow you to download from a maxed-out server--those who were lucky enough to get connected often get great speeds, while others have to wait in line. It's a pretty good system in some cases, I must say.
Re:Don't read too much into Googles response ...
on
Forget Moore's Law?
·
· Score: 2
That's not entirely right. EBay isn't really any more synchronised than Google.
You might have noticed when posting an auction that you can't search for it until quite a bit after posting. That's because the EBay servers don't synchronise and reindex as frequently as one might think. Their pages are kept as static as possible to reduce the load on their servers.
I've also had great success with a program called R-Studio. It managed to recover plenty of data from a very badly damaged drive, including files long-ago deleted. I only bought the NTFS version though, so I'll be sure to try out your suggestion if I ever need to recover other data.
According to the article, the European central bank is considering putting RF tags in to money. This is quite a fascinating idea, but it got me thinking...
If all the money in your wallet/purse were to contain an RF tag, would it not then be possible to simply "scan" someone to determine how much money is on them in an effort to ascertain if they're a worthwhile mugging target?
The idea to RF-tag money is probably a good one in theory (much easier to reduce counterfeiting), but something like this would bother me if I were carrying around lots of cash.
You have a very interesting point there, but I partially disagree, at least when it comes to comparing our results from the "control".
Our control condition would be, more or less, all past meteorological data. Sure, it changes drastically from day to day, but it's still fairly periodic on an annual basis.
A profound effect on the weather would be measurable and very easily noticeable. Say we manage to increase the rainfall in a region: we'd see a markedly increased rainfall which would then become the norm after several years. This rainfall might possibly adversely affect water levels elsewhere, which would also be measurable.
That's a simplistic example, but my point is we'd still have a basis for comparison, so in effect we would have some form of control condition.
That's a most interesting point. It reminds me of a rather amusing Star Trek: TNG episode during which the crew meets a grandmaster at some really complex 3d game. Even Data can't beat the grandmaster, and so he changes his tactic: prolong the game. Once the game lasts more than a few (extremely intense) seconds, the grandmaster loses his grip on the game and gives up. Data's goal had never been to win, but rather to annoy this specific grandmaster. Sounds quite similar to the Kasparov/IBM issue!
heh... It's actually one of the best in the world, by my reckoning. The system is extremely intelligently designed, with a network of rings and axes that provide excellent city coverage. I honestly *like* the London Underground and can't help but wish more systems were like it.
You didn't perhaps read the article, did you? The author was writing specifically to address the issue of splitting up the day in a logical fashion (and his unit *is* the day). It's a most intriguing concept, I believe. There's a bit of a mental jump to make, but the author's idea is actually a very nice one. Please read the article.
This is positively fantastic news. Mozilla has made enormous progress, especially in the past year, and it is truly a feat of human co-operation that it came as far as it did. My warmest regards go out to everyone involved in the project, for putting the effort into building such a wonderful, powerful application.
Re:War is a thing of the past..
on
Space Wars
·
· Score: 1
heh. Typo. Thanks for catching that!
Re:War is a thing of the past..
on
Space Wars
·
· Score: 1
I can't help but notice one of your opening comments:
World war is a thing of history, we learnt many good lessons
I really wish this were true. It isn't. That's what was said after the Great War (which later became known as World War II, because they were wrong). A new war could very conceivably erupt and engulf the entire world--far more than World War II. While a great number of countries have evolved in a sociological sense, many more have not--they remain backwards and dangerous in their thinking, and it is that sort of country that could bring along a whole new global conflict.
If you were to read the article, you'd learn that your fears are unfounded. C&C:G is being developed by EA Pacific and not Westwood Studios. Westwood will be used for filming alone, while every other aspect of the game will be done in Irvine (headquarters of EA Pactific). Furthermore, the EA Pacific branch was responsible for Red Alert 2 and Yuri's Revenge (add-on), both of which were some of the most revered games to come out in 2000-2001. This game _will_ be good.
Out of curiosity, did you even think before writing your post? They're talking about C&C: Generals, not C&C3
I find it amusing that this proposal would work pretty strangely against people who continually get lost while driving. Effectively, they'd pay for their poor sense of direction/orientation. =)
One very unlikely but possibly hilarious spin-off would be a huge increase in people giving wrong directions, just to spite drivers. heh
I don't know about you, but I would _NEVER_ consider putting thousands of dollars worth of computer equipment in a wooden shack. That's not to mention its ability to protect the stuff from rain and other elements that could likely destroy the equipment, too.
Does anyone know what will happen to their stock symbol on Nasdaq? In cases like this, do companies ever change their symbol, or is it common practice to never change a symbol for convenience' sake. I'm curious. Anyone have an answer to this?
So true. I'm in the same boat (life-long PC user).
Next year I'll be replacing my desktop with a laptop, because I absolutely need a laptop now. If I were to buy now, I would buy the Titanium. It's an incredible little machine, and not overly pricey given its abilities.
As an engineer (-to-be) I think the Titanium is technically amazing. It's got a great-looking screen, a fast hard drive (for a laptop), REALLY good battery life (5 hours *average*? I've never seen a similarly equipped Wintel laptop last anywhere near that long) etc. It's also pretty light (5.5lbs). I'm just blown away by the thing.
I'm hoping, though, that Dell comes out with a Wintel laptop that can compare. I don't know if it's feasible, though, because of the fundamental difference in hardware architectures. The thing is, I need some school-related software that exists under Windows only. Oddly enough, if Dell doesn't make a laptop like the Titianium, I'll forgo my needs.
Nope. It just has to do with Roman numerals. It's fitting in this case, because we had Star Trek [I, II, III, IV, V, VI, (VII), (VIII), (IX)]. They're just continuing the trend. Granted, the last three didn't quite have numerals in their names, but it makes sense, that this one become Star Trek X.
Frankly, I'm very disappointed with what Rogers is doing to its subscribers. I've been a customer for over two years, and I haven't left despite the frequent occurrences of down-time (initially, at least). It's gotten better since... Until now.
The single most horrible change that was implemented was the requirement for the 'From' field to be set to an @rogers.com address. That is completely unacceptable for many people, like me. I use a forwarding address for specifically this reason: I don't ever want to go through the hassle of informing people of an address change. I refuse to change the 'From' field, and rightly so. Problem is, I can't send email outside of the @rogers.com domain. Oh joy.
Another great disappointment is the loss of static IP. When I signed up, I was promised a static IP address. A year and a half later (not bad!) the service changed to dynamic, with the option of static (eg. gather settings, set the router, go on with life). Once the transition is complete, static addressing won't even be possible, much to my dismay. I don't care that I need it or not, it's a matter of a promise being a promise.
But there's more! The inbound email servers changed their user name requirements to "userid"@rogers.com (from "userid" plain and simple). This is a pain to get working under Netscape 4.x. For those of you who have yet to make the transition, please go see this Netscape article for information on how to make the change work. I didn't have time to look that up beforehand, so I got my family to make the transition to Netscape 6.2.
The list goes on... Tens of thousands of the 500 000 Rogers@home subscribers use Netscape. It was supported for a long time. Slowly, however, support for Netscape was dropped. Now the techies, whether they want to or not, are not allowed to assist with Netscape matters (save for giving out server info... I'll get to that).
When it comes to server info, Rogers did not, sadly, tell the techies or even their supervisors what the "real" servers are. Instead, they insist everyone use 'pop' and 'smtp', which is find and dandy if you don't have a router, but useless if you do. It took a lot of searching through newsgroups to find what the real servers are. I don't blame the techies for this; I blame Rogers.
I have much to gripe about over this transition and the service in general, but I think this is enough;-) It's a shame customers are being neglected and lied to as much as they are. If Rogers weren't the monopoly around here, I'd consider (NOT necessarily follow through on) switching to another service. Sympatico, though, is not an option (for me. I dislike PPPoE).
Just to note, both games held their city lists in a completely editable file. Want to add "Anon Town"? Go right ahead! Anything was possible with them, and the games didn't mind the larger file sizes.
You're forgetting who you're dealing with here: gamers. After playing hours and hours on any console, no matter how well designed, your thumbs will hurt, And believe me, typing with just sore thumbs is not for the weak at heart.
There's also the other issue of learning curve: While you can indeed type fast with those little mini-keyboards, they take a long time to get used to. Gamers, traditionally, just want to frag, blurt out a quick message, and frag some more. Learning how to type on a new keyboard is nowhere near as interesting as exploring levels and whatnot.
Consider the fact that we've had radios for a hundred years now, and TVs for quite a while now. Add to that cell phones and satellite communications, and you've got a nice big EM bubble around Earth, of radius 100 light-years (since EM travels at light speed, and we've been sending them out for a century).
Granted, a hundred light-years isn't much, but if aliens within that distance are looking out for signals in the same way that we are, they've got quite a large source of incoming info.
But there's more! On March 15, 1999, a 400 000 bit-long transmission was sent out to four "local" star systems suspected of harbouring life. Take a look at the fascinating Encounter 2001 transmission. It's absolutely worth a look. Try to figure some of it out too, just for fun =) IMO, it's brilliant.
So we are, after all, broadcasting quite a lot, whether it be specific targetting or general.
Many, many problems with backdoors in encryption software have been discussed (privacy, search-and-seizure laws, security), but I've seen no mention at all of one point:
Bad guys can make their own encryption.
I won't try to pretend it's easy to make a really good encryption algorithm, but it is relatively easy for a money-rich organisation to create fairly basic encryption scheme that will be at the very least difficult to break.
What this means is that anyone who uses 'legitimate' encryption will have weak-to-no security (backdoors essentially remove security), while the bad people we want to keep from using encryption will have at least moderate protection of their communications.
Please let your congressman (and leaders of your respective countries) know this! The safety of data worldwide depends on flawed logic, eg. that terrorists always use exportable software rather than designing their own.
This is an interesting, and mostly welcome development. I could argue that a palmtop platform really doesn't need to be terribly fast, since most people simply use them for keeping up with contacts and maintaining schedules, rather than watching video and streaming MP3s wirelessly...
What has me worried is this:
Although speeds have not been announced, the company has demonstrated the upcoming chips at 1GHz.
200MHz is a lot. 1GHz is utterly ridiculous. The biggest concern with having faster chips is reducing battery life. Most, if not all, WinCE devices have a max battery life in the hours. Granted, most such devices have colour screens, but it would be foolish to say the faster chips doesn't play a part in it. Even Palms are using more power nowadays. A year ago, it was common for a Palm (say IIIxe) to last a month or more on one set of batteries. Right now, I'm averaging 6 weeks between replacement, which is terrific. The newer m500 models are touted as lasting up to two weeks. That's nice, yes, but a disturbing fact of life is becoming increasingly obvious and disruptive: more features require more power and drain more energy.
Do we need the extra abilities? As I see it, we'll be losing sight of the original goal of a palmtop. Instead, what is now occurring is that the personal agenda of a year ago is being replaced with ever more powerful be-everything devices.
This has me worried. Perhaps my fears are misplaced?
Slashdot Mirror
If that's the case, then bigger packets would equate to fewer packets and thus less overhead. Was that a typo?
This actually could be quite interesting... Does FTP encode data much differently than HTML? I don't remember myself...
I agree with you. The differences are negligible to the average user. I can only think of one thing that might sway his choice: Does he want to ensure a minimum download speed for his users or does he want to provide for as many users as possible? If the latter is his preference, then again it doesn't matter, but if he wishes to partition his bandwidth to a limited number of users then perhaps anonymous FTP could be the solution.
Kind of like how a lot of Linux distribution sites/mirrors don't allow you to download from a maxed-out server--those who were lucky enough to get connected often get great speeds, while others have to wait in line. It's a pretty good system in some cases, I must say.
That's not entirely right. EBay isn't really any more synchronised than Google.
You might have noticed when posting an auction that you can't search for it until quite a bit after posting. That's because the EBay servers don't synchronise and reindex as frequently as one might think. Their pages are kept as static as possible to reduce the load on their servers.
I couldn't help but laugh upon noticing that the announcement about pretty fonts was made in "pre" (i.e. courier) style. Lovely.
That's interesting to know. Thanks for the link.
I've also had great success with a program called R-Studio. It managed to recover plenty of data from a very badly damaged drive, including files long-ago deleted. I only bought the NTFS version though, so I'll be sure to try out your suggestion if I ever need to recover other data.
According to the article, the European central bank is considering putting RF tags in to money. This is quite a fascinating idea, but it got me thinking...
If all the money in your wallet/purse were to contain an RF tag, would it not then be possible to simply "scan" someone to determine how much money is on them in an effort to ascertain if they're a worthwhile mugging target?
The idea to RF-tag money is probably a good one in theory (much easier to reduce counterfeiting), but something like this would bother me if I were carrying around lots of cash.
You have a very interesting point there, but I partially disagree, at least when it comes to comparing our results from the "control".
Our control condition would be, more or less, all past meteorological data. Sure, it changes drastically from day to day, but it's still fairly periodic on an annual basis.
A profound effect on the weather would be measurable and very easily noticeable. Say we manage to increase the rainfall in a region: we'd see a markedly increased rainfall which would then become the norm after several years. This rainfall might possibly adversely affect water levels elsewhere, which would also be measurable.
That's a simplistic example, but my point is we'd still have a basis for comparison, so in effect we would have some form of control condition.
That's a most interesting point. It reminds me of a rather amusing Star Trek: TNG episode during which the crew meets a grandmaster at some really complex 3d game. Even Data can't beat the grandmaster, and so he changes his tactic: prolong the game. Once the game lasts more than a few (extremely intense) seconds, the grandmaster loses his grip on the game and gives up. Data's goal had never been to win, but rather to annoy this specific grandmaster. Sounds quite similar to the Kasparov/IBM issue!
I just thought the parallel was fun. =)
heh... It's actually one of the best in the world, by my reckoning. The system is extremely intelligently designed, with a network of rings and axes that provide excellent city coverage. I honestly *like* the London Underground and can't help but wish more systems were like it.
Out of curiosity, why do people dislike it?
You didn't perhaps read the article, did you? The author was writing specifically to address the issue of splitting up the day in a logical fashion (and his unit *is* the day). It's a most intriguing concept, I believe. There's a bit of a mental jump to make, but the author's idea is actually a very nice one. Please read the article.
This is positively fantastic news. Mozilla has made enormous progress, especially in the past year, and it is truly a feat of human co-operation that it came as far as it did. My warmest regards go out to everyone involved in the project, for putting the effort into building such a wonderful, powerful application.
heh. Typo. Thanks for catching that!
I can't help but notice one of your opening comments:
I really wish this were true. It isn't. That's what was said after the Great War (which later became known as World War II, because they were wrong). A new war could very conceivably erupt and engulf the entire world--far more than World War II. While a great number of countries have evolved in a sociological sense, many more have not--they remain backwards and dangerous in their thinking, and it is that sort of country that could bring along a whole new global conflict.
If you were to read the article, you'd learn that your fears are unfounded. C&C:G is being developed by EA Pacific and not Westwood Studios. Westwood will be used for filming alone, while every other aspect of the game will be done in Irvine (headquarters of EA Pactific). Furthermore, the EA Pacific branch was responsible for Red Alert 2 and Yuri's Revenge (add-on), both of which were some of the most revered games to come out in 2000-2001. This game _will_ be good.
Out of curiosity, did you even think before writing your post? They're talking about C&C: Generals, not C&C3
I find it amusing that this proposal would work pretty strangely against people who continually get lost while driving. Effectively, they'd pay for their poor sense of direction/orientation. =)
One very unlikely but possibly hilarious spin-off would be a huge increase in people giving wrong directions, just to spite drivers. heh
I don't know about you, but I would _NEVER_ consider putting thousands of dollars worth of computer equipment in a wooden shack. That's not to mention its ability to protect the stuff from rain and other elements that could likely destroy the equipment, too.
Does anyone know what will happen to their stock symbol on Nasdaq? In cases like this, do companies ever change their symbol, or is it common practice to never change a symbol for convenience' sake. I'm curious. Anyone have an answer to this?
So true. I'm in the same boat (life-long PC user).
Next year I'll be replacing my desktop with a laptop, because I absolutely need a laptop now. If I were to buy now, I would buy the Titanium. It's an incredible little machine, and not overly pricey given its abilities.
As an engineer (-to-be) I think the Titanium is technically amazing. It's got a great-looking screen, a fast hard drive (for a laptop), REALLY good battery life (5 hours *average*? I've never seen a similarly equipped Wintel laptop last anywhere near that long) etc. It's also pretty light (5.5lbs). I'm just blown away by the thing.
I'm hoping, though, that Dell comes out with a Wintel laptop that can compare. I don't know if it's feasible, though, because of the fundamental difference in hardware architectures. The thing is, I need some school-related software that exists under Windows only. Oddly enough, if Dell doesn't make a laptop like the Titianium, I'll forgo my needs.
Nope. It just has to do with Roman numerals. It's fitting in this case, because we had Star Trek [I, II, III, IV, V, VI, (VII), (VIII), (IX)]. They're just continuing the trend. Granted, the last three didn't quite have numerals in their names, but it makes sense, that this one become Star Trek X.
but it is pissing awfully a lot of people
It sure is!
Frankly, I'm very disappointed with what Rogers is doing to its subscribers. I've been a customer for over two years, and I haven't left despite the frequent occurrences of down-time (initially, at least). It's gotten better since... Until now.
The single most horrible change that was implemented was the requirement for the 'From' field to be set to an @rogers.com address. That is completely unacceptable for many people, like me. I use a forwarding address for specifically this reason: I don't ever want to go through the hassle of informing people of an address change. I refuse to change the 'From' field, and rightly so. Problem is, I can't send email outside of the @rogers.com domain. Oh joy.
Another great disappointment is the loss of static IP. When I signed up, I was promised a static IP address. A year and a half later (not bad!) the service changed to dynamic, with the option of static (eg. gather settings, set the router, go on with life). Once the transition is complete, static addressing won't even be possible, much to my dismay. I don't care that I need it or not, it's a matter of a promise being a promise.
But there's more! The inbound email servers changed their user name requirements to "userid"@rogers.com (from "userid" plain and simple). This is a pain to get working under Netscape 4.x. For those of you who have yet to make the transition, please go see this Netscape article for information on how to make the change work. I didn't have time to look that up beforehand, so I got my family to make the transition to Netscape 6.2.
The list goes on... Tens of thousands of the 500 000 Rogers@home subscribers use Netscape. It was supported for a long time. Slowly, however, support for Netscape was dropped. Now the techies, whether they want to or not, are not allowed to assist with Netscape matters (save for giving out server info... I'll get to that).
When it comes to server info, Rogers did not, sadly, tell the techies or even their supervisors what the "real" servers are. Instead, they insist everyone use 'pop' and 'smtp', which is find and dandy if you don't have a router, but useless if you do. It took a lot of searching through newsgroups to find what the real servers are. I don't blame the techies for this; I blame Rogers.
I have much to gripe about over this transition and the service in general, but I think this is enough ;-) It's a shame customers are being neglected and lied to as much as they are. If Rogers weren't the monopoly around here, I'd consider (NOT necessarily follow through on) switching to another service. Sympatico, though, is not an option (for me. I dislike PPPoE).
Thanks for hearing me through. Cheers!
Just to note, both games held their city lists in a completely editable file. Want to add "Anon Town"? Go right ahead! Anything was possible with them, and the games didn't mind the larger file sizes.
You're forgetting who you're dealing with here: gamers. After playing hours and hours on any console, no matter how well designed, your thumbs will hurt, And believe me, typing with just sore thumbs is not for the weak at heart.
There's also the other issue of learning curve: While you can indeed type fast with those little mini-keyboards, they take a long time to get used to. Gamers, traditionally, just want to frag, blurt out a quick message, and frag some more. Learning how to type on a new keyboard is nowhere near as interesting as exploring levels and whatnot.
And it many ways, at that.
Consider the fact that we've had radios for a hundred years now, and TVs for quite a while now. Add to that cell phones and satellite communications, and you've got a nice big EM bubble around Earth, of radius 100 light-years (since EM travels at light speed, and we've been sending them out for a century).
Granted, a hundred light-years isn't much, but if aliens within that distance are looking out for signals in the same way that we are, they've got quite a large source of incoming info.
But there's more! On March 15, 1999, a 400 000 bit-long transmission was sent out to four "local" star systems suspected of harbouring life. Take a look at the fascinating Encounter 2001 transmission. It's absolutely worth a look. Try to figure some of it out too, just for fun =) IMO, it's brilliant.
So we are, after all, broadcasting quite a lot, whether it be specific targetting or general.
Cheers.
Many, many problems with backdoors in encryption software have been discussed (privacy, search-and-seizure laws, security), but I've seen no mention at all of one point:
Bad guys can make their own encryption.
I won't try to pretend it's easy to make a really good encryption algorithm, but it is relatively easy for a money-rich organisation to create fairly basic encryption scheme that will be at the very least difficult to break.
What this means is that anyone who uses 'legitimate' encryption will have weak-to-no security (backdoors essentially remove security), while the bad people we want to keep from using encryption will have at least moderate protection of their communications.
Please let your congressman (and leaders of your respective countries) know this! The safety of data worldwide depends on flawed logic, eg. that terrorists always use exportable software rather than designing their own.
This is an interesting, and mostly welcome development. I could argue that a palmtop platform really doesn't need to be terribly fast, since most people simply use them for keeping up with contacts and maintaining schedules, rather than watching video and streaming MP3s wirelessly...
What has me worried is this:
200MHz is a lot. 1GHz is utterly ridiculous. The biggest concern with having faster chips is reducing battery life. Most, if not all, WinCE devices have a max battery life in the hours. Granted, most such devices have colour screens, but it would be foolish to say the faster chips doesn't play a part in it. Even Palms are using more power nowadays. A year ago, it was common for a Palm (say IIIxe) to last a month or more on one set of batteries. Right now, I'm averaging 6 weeks between replacement, which is terrific. The newer m500 models are touted as lasting up to two weeks. That's nice, yes, but a disturbing fact of life is becoming increasingly obvious and disruptive: more features require more power and drain more energy.
Do we need the extra abilities? As I see it, we'll be losing sight of the original goal of a palmtop. Instead, what is now occurring is that the personal agenda of a year ago is being replaced with ever more powerful be-everything devices.
This has me worried. Perhaps my fears are misplaced?