.. spoiler warning for those that haven't seen the mini-series..
What, no Jar-Jar?
I'm deeply pleased that there was no comic-relief designate being force-fed to the audience, the equivalent of the Jar Jar Binks or Ruby Rod.. the type of character that is intended to appeal to children and otherwise garner ratings from dim-witted twits. Allowing any light-hearted moments to be presented by the otherwise heavy-hearted characters gave those characters more dynamic range and drove home the contrast of those moments. It strays from the mass-market recipe on this, and it's better as a result.
If anything, the Boltar character was the most consistently funny, but in a tragically deprecating way. He's the darkest character so it worked to allow him to be the infrequent goofball. Some of his body language like the head moves were seriously funny once you're watching for them, but there's no gratuitous slapstick and you're not going to catch him on the front of a cereal box.
From the death-to-the-humans dept.
If more of these do see the light of day, the Cylon motivation should prove to be one of the more interesting cornerstones to the overall plot. Components of the machine-against-human thread have played out all over the place, ie. Matrix, Terminator, the Borg, even the replicants from Stargate, the 'original' series.
The twist in this case is that the machines, the Cylons in this case, appear to have developed philosophy, and as a result, ideology, and most interestingly, theology. This makes for some dark comparisons to holy war, and not accidentally.
For twists-upon-twists, it will be interesting to see if the creation of these almost-human Cylon models become their own downfall.. they'll be just soooo human that they'll also be lumped into the you-must-be-destroyed category. There's a graying of the demarcation between humans and cylons, in that both are just complicated machines that are virtually indistinguishable from one another. Perhaps the 12 Cylon models aren't necessarily manufactured, maybe they're clones from a dozen kidnap victims.. at least one from a stripper convention.
The MyTrack API has improved quite a bit from the previous poster's experience, both in featureset and in execution times. Unless there's a network or host problem, you'll receive order executions that can be measured in mere milliseconds, and a real-time market data feed with no delays at all.
The API is fully event driven, not based on client polls, this is the real deal. You get intraday real-time data, full back-office connection for data queries and brokerage operations.
The brokerage operations have also improved quite a bit. The proprietary order routing is still available, but you now have extensive control over order routing decisions based on whatever personality you want to create.
One of the best brokerage features is the capability to operate with their brokerage back-end, but use a simulation account. All function calls behave the same, but you're operating with $100K in play money. This is a must-have to develop and test your code with no risk.
This is not simply a set of silly scripts to run in back of a website, this is an API to build your own application. Current API offerings cover C/C++, Java, and VB. Each of these have example code as well.
Honest opinion - I've got nothing to gain by having anyone sign up.
See the myTrack site for basic info including Track Data's other offerings. Go to the Pact Consulting site to download the API for free.
All points correct. To further add insult to injury, a simple mirrored operation is typically going to be even SLOWER than just a single drive, particularly if you're only running software mirroring.
The real benefit is to go with at least THREE drives and stripe the data across the physical drive units. You get better throughput and recoverability if you configure for parity checking.
The point of going with SCSI optical drives has more to do with the nature of the bus than the measured or perceived throughput.
> wouldn't the new plextor 24x be way faster even if it is ATAPI?
First of all, you can't realistically burn media at 24x. The current media technology doesn't support it. The 24x drives only READ at that incredible spin rate, so don't get stuck on the spin rate. The focus here is bus-type.. IDE vs. SCSI.
To illustrate the point, with the buffering capability and the resulting sustained throughput of even a mediocre SCSI flavor, you can read directly from a SCSI ROM and write directly to a SCSI writeable (CD-R, RW, etc.).. without any space consuming and time consuming mastering to hard drive.
The numbers are looking better for ATA, but it's still not there.
Slashdot Mirror
What, no Jar-Jar?
I'm deeply pleased that there was no comic-relief designate being force-fed to the audience, the equivalent of the Jar Jar Binks or Ruby Rod .. the type of character that is intended to appeal to children and otherwise garner ratings from dim-witted twits. Allowing any light-hearted moments to be presented by the otherwise heavy-hearted characters gave those characters more dynamic range and drove home the contrast of those moments. It strays from the mass-market recipe on this, and it's better as a result.
If anything, the Boltar character was the most consistently funny, but in a tragically deprecating way. He's the darkest character so it worked to allow him to be the infrequent goofball. Some of his body language like the head moves were seriously funny once you're watching for them, but there's no gratuitous slapstick and you're not going to catch him on the front of a cereal box.
From the death-to-the-humans dept.
If more of these do see the light of day, the Cylon motivation should prove to be one of the more interesting cornerstones to the overall plot. Components of the machine-against-human thread have played out all over the place, ie. Matrix, Terminator, the Borg, even the replicants from Stargate, the 'original' series.
The twist in this case is that the machines, the Cylons in this case, appear to have developed philosophy, and as a result, ideology, and most interestingly, theology. This makes for some dark comparisons to holy war, and not accidentally.
For twists-upon-twists, it will be interesting to see if the creation of these almost-human Cylon models become their own downfall .. they'll be just soooo human that they'll also be lumped into the you-must-be-destroyed category. There's a graying of the demarcation between humans and cylons, in that both are just complicated machines that are virtually indistinguishable from one another. Perhaps the 12 Cylon models aren't necessarily manufactured, maybe they're clones from a dozen kidnap victims .. at least one from a stripper convention.
+small +"form factor" +"optical drive"
--
Allen Gray
The MyTrack API has improved quite a bit from the previous poster's experience, both in featureset and in execution times. Unless there's a network or host problem, you'll receive order executions that can be measured in mere milliseconds, and a real-time market data feed with no delays at all.
The API is fully event driven, not based on client polls, this is the real deal. You get intraday real-time data, full back-office connection for data queries and brokerage operations.
The brokerage operations have also improved quite a bit. The proprietary order routing is still available, but you now have extensive control over order routing decisions based on whatever personality you want to create.
One of the best brokerage features is the capability to operate with their brokerage back-end, but use a simulation account. All function calls behave the same, but you're operating with $100K in play money. This is a must-have to develop and test your code with no risk.
This is not simply a set of silly scripts to run in back of a website, this is an API to build your own application. Current API offerings cover C/C++, Java, and VB. Each of these have example code as well.
Honest opinion - I've got nothing to gain by having anyone sign up.
See the myTrack site for basic info including Track Data's other offerings. Go to the Pact Consulting site to download the API for free.
--
Allen Gray
http://agray.com
All points correct. To further add insult to injury, a simple mirrored operation is typically going to be even SLOWER than just a single drive, particularly if you're only running software mirroring.
The real benefit is to go with at least THREE drives and stripe the data across the physical drive units. You get better throughput and recoverability if you configure for parity checking.
--
Allen Gray
The point of going with SCSI optical drives has more to do with the nature of the bus than the measured or perceived throughput.
.. IDE vs. SCSI.
.. without any space consuming and time consuming mastering to hard drive.
> wouldn't the new plextor 24x be way faster even if it is ATAPI?
First of all, you can't realistically burn media at 24x. The current media technology doesn't support it. The 24x drives only READ at that incredible spin rate, so don't get stuck on the spin rate. The focus here is bus-type
To illustrate the point, with the buffering capability and the resulting sustained throughput of even a mediocre SCSI flavor, you can read directly from a SCSI ROM and write directly to a SCSI writeable (CD-R, RW, etc.)
The numbers are looking better for ATA, but it's still not there.
--
Allen Gray
Let's see here. One nuclear powered satellite + (possible) Lunar ice field = contamination of the Moon's water supply?