I was just going to ask about that. Claiming the land immediately around the flag as one's own is pretty obvious, but how did they draw the lines?
Actually, I think there was this nice little event when the first guy to sail around the tip of South America (Magellan, I think) saw the Pacific Ocean as the first European. He claimed it to Spain (or Portugal?). He had no idea how damn big it was or where the other shore would be, but that wasn't really a problem in MAKING the claim. Holding on to it was another matter, of course...
We had a little seminar on patent system and patents in general at our company. As such, I asked some questions about software patents and these seemingly trivial patents like "one-click shopping". The guy responded that even though the Patent Office may grant the patent, all patents have (IIRC) 9 month period when others can comment on it and have it taken down if they have sufficient basis (such as prior art). Even after the period, they can still be taken down with a court ruling, but then the process is of course more expensive.
He mentioned that most of the more controversial ones, including the one-click shopping, have been contested and thrown away a long time ago. Can someone confirm this?
I'm not sure whether I should have believed everything, (mostly I think they were trying to goad the developers into thinking that software patents that were-soon-to-be reality here in Europe are a good thing), but just my two cents..
There have been other posts how the hard drives should be destroyed and not wiped&sold after usage. A friend of mine once worked at a steel mill. Smashing them to bits with a hammer was not good enough - the used hard drives went directly to the smelted iron...
No risk of leaking the data through used computers.
Thanks. I didn't know that it had been moved to sourceforge, that's why I just did the Google link (which provided a lot of places to download it, anyway).
For Windows, I would suggest using Media Player Classic. It's made to look like the good, light and fast Media Player 6.4 but it includes support for all the new codecs (including an automatic search from the web if you feed it a video with uninstalled codec) and has a ton of nice features. The updates come rather regularly.
I don't know about this new mplayer on Windows, but the 0.9 at least was very slow on my computer. On FreeBSD it works fine.
I don't know, but I would assume that even in the US you can get the same things as here in Finland - electronic phonebooks, available online in the web, on CD-ROM, or accessible via SMS (Just type in FIND [address] [hometown] and send it to number 15400, you'll get the number in reply. When using my company phone and need something (such as a taxi when I'm on business trip), I usually just dial to a phonebook service and ask them to connect me directly.
So, we're hardly limited to a once-a-year updated books...
You _doubt_ it, your parent says _probably_ not. Well, they're _definitely_ not connected to the Internet in any way, which becomes apparent if you just read the first few paragrphs of the article.
Actually, I inserted the "probably" (and a smiley) because, after all, they could implement this private network over Internet using some sort of VPNs or other similar tricks.
It should be noted that altough everything is transporter over IP, they are (probably:)) not transferring their voice over public Internet and it is not even connected to Internet in any way.
It's still a private network, they are just shifting to a more generic and cost-effective infrastructure. So I suppose you still can not slashdot the phone network..
This is hardly the death of UMTS. Of course, I'm an engineer, so the techical terms may not be the same ones used by the public at large.
Anyway, in upcoming UMTS versions (starting from rel 5 I believe), the UMTS network can actually use WLAN as an access technology. It can also use xDSL, for that matter. The "old" WCDMA is of course still there.
The basic idea is to converge all those different networks so that telcos that act also as ISPs don't need duplicate systems for user accounts and stuff. This way there can also be easier integration (access your mail account from your phone WITHOUT any hassle -> everything is configured into your subscriber SIM card) and stuff like that.
Actually, the official position for most telcos deploying UMTS (as in "WCDMA") seems to be that they are back to their original plans. Original meaning the same plans they had before the IT boom. The boom was supposed to speed things up a bit => well, it did not, and everyone lost some money, but what the hell, show must go on.
(Disclaimer: I may have myself confused some of the terminology above. Currently I'm 100% certain only of the "IMT-2000" umbrella term:))
Suddenly I became very interested, since I have been looking for a quiet x86 Laptop, and I was really impressed with Apple Powerbooks - no fans to speak of.
However, nowhere on the Twinhead site I could find information on this technology. Do they actually sell fanless P4 laptops? Where can you find more info on this?
I'm probably nitpicking here, but I would really prefer if everyone would refer to this 4-DVD release as it was intended by Peter Jackson - as an extended cut and not "Director's cut". Peter Jackson has himself explained that he does not like the term "DC" because it implies that there was something wrong, in the original theaterical release. This has been mentioned in almost every interview during the year. Thank you.
Similar change in chosen modulation may eventually be done with GPRS (GMSK -> 8-PSK) when transitioning to EDGE.
Anyway, I was under the impression that there are more modifications than simply changing to a bigger symbol constellation, such as different spectrum (higher frequencies and wider bandwidth, ie. 1,23MHz -> 5 MHz).
Regardless, there still has to be new equipment in the radio interface, and completely new base stations, too. Even if the frequencies are not higher (resulting in smaller cells), changing the increasing the number of bits per symbol requires higher S/N (or in the case of CDMA, Eb/N0).
Most carriers who use CDMA now won't go to W-CDMA, they'll go to CDMA-2000 which is a different standard from W-CDMA.
I think you are correct on this one. The terminology is rather confusing. Only real constant seems to me "IMT-2000" which in general means all the upcoming wideband CDMA technologies (cdma2000, UMTS, and the one the Japanese have). Even the term "3G" is no longer constant (some folks in the US refer to GPRS networks as "3G", in europe it is "2.5". I have actually heard the term "11.5G" (comes from GSM + GPRS + UMTS + WLAN, 2+2.5+3+4 = 11.5 - some visionaries are really into hyping the WLAN approach...))
I did actually mean to say that as "CDMA -> CDMA2000" and not WCDMA, but...see above:)
Finally catching up? In a way perhaps, but surpassing as well. Thank god for American capitalism and competition, even if it fragmented the market for a little while. CDMA technology is much better than GSM(w/TDMA), so Sprint should do very well with their nation wide network while all the GSM carriers around the world have to completely retrofit their systems for WCDMA 3/4G.
Actually, no need to do a "complete retrofit". Or, any more retrofitting than Sprint has to do.
When doing the transition from GSM to GPRS, you need a new core network (SGSN, GGSN, et al), to process packet data. This is rather reasonable. There is no need to do any refitting on the radio interfaces, except a Packet Unit to each base station controller.
The next upgrade comes when 3G comes, that is, UMTS in Europe. Now there is no need to refit the core - SGSN and GGSN are the same as before (well, they need a software upgrade, but that is about it). The radio interface of course needs upgrading, but the same upgrades are necessary when transitioning from CDMA -> WCDMA.
At the moment, it is more of a marketing and business decision than anything else. The technology is there, there is just no market for it yet (GPRS seems to be enough for everybody for now). The upgrades would be relatively cheap.
The actual model that we'll see in Europe will be a mixture of UMTS and GPRS networks. UMTS will cover cities and population centres. Your phone will sign up to UMTS network and do a hard handover to GPRS network when you go to rural areas - only thing you notice is that data transfer speed goes down. There is no need to set up UMTS network everywhere. I would imagine this is also the thing with Sprint's network...
In the future, it may even be possible that WLAN techniques will be used as a possible access medium. UMTS standard is pretty free on what the access technology is - in revision 5 there are actually such possibilities as xDSL(!) listed. Wired access to a wireless network core - probably simplifies things for operators that act both as ISPs and mobile network providers.
Rather than design their own rocket to get something into space (like the Ariadne), Europe could just use existing and superior Russian Proton rockets or even a Shuttle. The money saved can go towards research in areas that we excel in (don't ask me which those areas are).
From the article:
In less than six months, the finished Beagle 2 will join the Mars Express satellite on a trip to the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, from where the pair should launch in May or June, ESA scientists said.
So, they are indeed launching this stuff with russian rockets. I think they have done the same thing in the past with other scientific projects (Such as Cluster II satellites). So it seems that even ESA itself is starting to see the russian superiority when it comes to lifting stuff up - If someone else buys launch services from Arianespace instead - well, kudos to the marketing:)
Ah. I found the information. However, I cannot provide a direct link, because they use unique user ID's in the URL. You can find the article at silicon.com by clicking the bit about KPNQwest right at the front page and then checking on the "related articles". Here are the most important bits pasted:
Europe's largest fibre optic network operator, KPNQwest, is set to shut down its entire operations at 17.30 (BST) today after the collapse of rescue talks with potential buyers and banks.
The source said that employees in the UK office have been informed they will not be receiving any redundancy packages and are currently being instructed on how to appeal to the government to reclaim what they are owed.
A second source close to the situation confirmed the details. At 11:55 (BST), the source told silicon.com: "Try ringing any phone in the office in five minutes and you won't get an answer."
However, the article later states that
A spokesman from KPNQwest denied the allegation. He said: "That (network shutdown) is not happening today. The holding company KPNQwest NV has filed for bankruptcy as have five subsidiaries in the Netherlands. A number of other divisions of the company including the UK have filed for protection from creditors.
So, I probably should have tried to find the source article a bit more vigorously before posting...
I've read on this finnish news site that KPNQwests network will be/was shut down at 17:30 BTC, and since they are currently in daylight savings time, that should mean 16:30 UTC. The article states that the source is at www.silicon.com, however, I couldn't find the information in there right away.
In article, they also mention that the KPN's British offices will be/was shut down around midday. I'm not sure on whether this means today (Friday) or tomorrow (Saturday). Probably today, which meant that the network went down like four hours ago..
Slashdot Mirror
I was just going to ask about that. Claiming the land immediately around the flag as one's own is pretty obvious, but how did they draw the lines?
Actually, I think there was this nice little event when the first guy to sail around the tip of South America (Magellan, I think) saw the Pacific Ocean as the first European. He claimed it to Spain (or Portugal?). He had no idea how damn big it was or where the other shore would be, but that wasn't really a problem in MAKING the claim. Holding on to it was another matter, of course...
We had a little seminar on patent system and patents in general at our company. As such, I asked some questions about software patents and these seemingly trivial patents like "one-click shopping". The guy responded that even though the Patent Office may grant the patent, all patents have (IIRC) 9 month period when others can comment on it and have it taken down if they have sufficient basis (such as prior art). Even after the period, they can still be taken down with a court ruling, but then the process is of course more expensive.
He mentioned that most of the more controversial ones, including the one-click shopping, have been contested and thrown away a long time ago. Can someone confirm this?
I'm not sure whether I should have believed everything, (mostly I think they were trying to goad the developers into thinking that software patents that were-soon-to-be reality here in Europe are a good thing), but just my two cents..
There have been other posts how the hard drives should be destroyed and not wiped&sold after usage. A friend of mine once worked at a steel mill. Smashing them to bits with a hammer was not good enough - the used hard drives went directly to the smelted iron...
No risk of leaking the data through used computers.
I thought they were written by Alfred Hitchcock when I was a kid and read like all of them :) (Who was Hector Sebastian, anyway?).
Thanks. I didn't know that it had been moved to sourceforge, that's why I just did the Google link (which provided a lot of places to download it, anyway).
For Windows, I would suggest using Media Player Classic. It's made to look like the good, light and fast Media Player 6.4 but it includes support for all the new codecs (including an automatic search from the web if you feed it a video with uninstalled codec) and has a ton of nice features. The updates come rather regularly.
I don't know about this new mplayer on Windows, but the 0.9 at least was very slow on my computer. On FreeBSD it works fine.
Anonymising the data makes it hard to ensure that everyone casts only one vote. Consider Slashdot polls an example.
There are possible ways around this, based on cryptographical methods. Take a look at this, for example.
Phew. Okay. here's the google cache in case it gets Slashdotted!
I like the notice on their cached page:
Google is not affiliated with the authors of this page nor responsible for its content
I don't know, but I would assume that even in the US you can get the same things as here in Finland - electronic phonebooks, available online in the web, on CD-ROM, or accessible via SMS (Just type in FIND [address] [hometown] and send it to number 15400, you'll get the number in reply. When using my company phone and need something (such as a taxi when I'm on business trip), I usually just dial to a phonebook service and ask them to connect me directly.
So, we're hardly limited to a once-a-year updated books...
You slashdotted NASA!
http://us.imdb.com/Quotes?0205873
I'd hate to see the "Room Temperature" the guy who wrote that lives in.
/50 = 300 K.
Umm. 15000 K
300 K - 273,15 = 26,85 degrees Celcius, about 80 Fahrenheit. A bit warm, but nothing extreme..
You _doubt_ it, your parent says _probably_ not. Well, they're _definitely_ not connected to the Internet in any way, which becomes apparent if you just read the first few paragrphs of the article.
Actually, I inserted the "probably" (and a smiley) because, after all, they could implement this private network over Internet using some sort of VPNs or other similar tricks.
It should be noted that altough everything is transporter over IP, they are (probably :)) not transferring their voice over public Internet and it is not even connected to Internet in any way.
It's still a private network, they are just shifting to a more generic and cost-effective infrastructure. So I suppose you still can not slashdot the phone network..
OSPF.. the bitchin routing protocol ;-)
IS-IS scales better.
Let the war begin.
This is hardly the death of UMTS. Of course, I'm an engineer, so the techical terms may not be the same ones used by the public at large.
:))
Anyway, in upcoming UMTS versions (starting from rel 5 I believe), the UMTS network can actually use WLAN as an access technology. It can also use xDSL, for that matter. The "old" WCDMA is of course still there.
The basic idea is to converge all those different networks so that telcos that act also as ISPs don't need duplicate systems for user accounts and stuff. This way there can also be easier integration (access your mail account from your phone WITHOUT any hassle -> everything is configured into your subscriber SIM card) and stuff like that.
Actually, the official position for most telcos deploying UMTS (as in "WCDMA") seems to be that they are back to their original plans. Original meaning the same plans they had before the IT boom. The boom was supposed to speed things up a bit => well, it did not, and everyone lost some money, but what the hell, show must go on.
(Disclaimer: I may have myself confused some of the terminology above. Currently I'm 100% certain only of the "IMT-2000" umbrella term
I thought Happiness was a reasonably decent movie.
...can it also make a reasonably good coffee?
Suddenly I became very interested, since I have been looking for a quiet x86 Laptop, and I was really impressed with Apple Powerbooks - no fans to speak of.
However, nowhere on the Twinhead site I could find information on this technology. Do they actually sell fanless P4 laptops? Where can you find more info on this?
I'm probably nitpicking here, but I would really prefer if everyone would refer to this 4-DVD release as it was intended by Peter Jackson - as an extended cut and not "Director's cut". Peter Jackson has himself explained that he does not like the term "DC" because it implies that there was something wrong, in the original theaterical release. This has been mentioned in almost every interview during the year. Thank you.
Similar change in chosen modulation may eventually be done with GPRS (GMSK -> 8-PSK) when transitioning to EDGE.
Anyway, I was under the impression that there are more modifications than simply changing to a bigger symbol constellation, such as different spectrum (higher frequencies and wider bandwidth, ie. 1,23MHz -> 5 MHz).
Regardless, there still has to be new equipment in the radio interface, and completely new base stations, too. Even if the frequencies are not higher (resulting in smaller cells), changing the increasing the number of bits per symbol requires higher S/N (or in the case of CDMA, Eb/N0).
Most carriers who use CDMA now won't go to W-CDMA, they'll go to CDMA-2000 which is a different standard from W-CDMA.
:)
I think you are correct on this one. The terminology is rather confusing. Only real constant seems to me "IMT-2000" which in general means all the upcoming wideband CDMA technologies (cdma2000, UMTS, and the one the Japanese have). Even the term "3G" is no longer constant (some folks in the US refer to GPRS networks as "3G", in europe it is "2.5". I have actually heard the term "11.5G" (comes from GSM + GPRS + UMTS + WLAN, 2+2.5+3+4 = 11.5 - some visionaries are really into hyping the WLAN approach...))
I did actually mean to say that as "CDMA -> CDMA2000" and not WCDMA, but...see above
Finally catching up? In a way perhaps, but surpassing as well. Thank god for American capitalism and competition, even if it fragmented the market for a little while. CDMA technology is much better than GSM(w/TDMA), so Sprint should do very well with their nation wide network while all the GSM carriers around the world have to completely retrofit their systems for WCDMA 3/4G.
Actually, no need to do a "complete retrofit". Or, any more retrofitting than Sprint has to do.
When doing the transition from GSM to GPRS, you need a new core network (SGSN, GGSN, et al), to process packet data. This is rather reasonable. There is no need to do any refitting on the radio interfaces, except a Packet Unit to each base station controller.
The next upgrade comes when 3G comes, that is, UMTS in Europe. Now there is no need to refit the core - SGSN and GGSN are the same as before (well, they need a software upgrade, but that is about it). The radio interface of course needs upgrading, but the same upgrades are necessary when transitioning from CDMA -> WCDMA.
At the moment, it is more of a marketing and business decision than anything else. The technology is there, there is just no market for it yet (GPRS seems to be enough for everybody for now). The upgrades would be relatively cheap.
The actual model that we'll see in Europe will be a mixture of UMTS and GPRS networks. UMTS will cover cities and population centres. Your phone will sign up to UMTS network and do a hard handover to GPRS network when you go to rural areas - only thing you notice is that data transfer speed goes down. There is no need to set up UMTS network everywhere. I would imagine this is also the thing with Sprint's network...
In the future, it may even be possible that WLAN techniques will be used as a possible access medium. UMTS standard is pretty free on what the access technology is - in revision 5 there are actually such possibilities as xDSL(!) listed. Wired access to a wireless network core - probably simplifies things for operators that act both as ISPs and mobile network providers.
Just my two (euro)cents...
Rather than design their own rocket to get something into space (like the Ariadne), Europe could just use existing and superior Russian Proton rockets or even a Shuttle. The money saved can go towards research in areas that we excel in (don't ask me which those areas are).
:)
From the article:
In less than six months, the finished Beagle 2 will join the Mars Express satellite on a trip to the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, from where the pair should launch in May or June, ESA scientists said.
So, they are indeed launching this stuff with russian rockets. I think they have done the same thing in the past with other scientific projects (Such as Cluster II satellites). So it seems that even ESA itself is starting to see the russian superiority when it comes to lifting stuff up - If someone else buys launch services from Arianespace instead - well, kudos to the marketing
Ah. I found the information. However, I cannot provide a direct link, because they use unique user ID's in the URL. You can find the article at silicon.com by clicking the bit about KPNQwest right at the front page and then checking on the "related articles". Here are the most important bits pasted:
Europe's largest fibre optic network operator, KPNQwest, is set to shut down its entire operations at 17.30 (BST) today after the collapse of rescue talks with potential buyers and banks.
The source said that employees in the UK office have been informed they will not be receiving any redundancy packages and are currently being instructed on how to appeal to the government to reclaim what they are owed.
A second source close to the situation confirmed the details. At 11:55 (BST), the source told silicon.com: "Try ringing any phone in the office in five minutes and you won't get an answer."
However, the article later states that
A spokesman from KPNQwest denied the allegation. He said: "That (network shutdown) is not happening today. The holding company KPNQwest NV has filed for bankruptcy as have five subsidiaries in the Netherlands. A number of other divisions of the company including the UK have filed for protection from creditors.
So, I probably should have tried to find the source article a bit more vigorously before posting...
I've read on this finnish news site that KPNQwests network will be/was shut down at 17:30 BTC, and since they are currently in daylight savings time, that should mean 16:30 UTC. The article states that the source is at www.silicon.com, however, I couldn't find the information in there right away.
In article, they also mention that the KPN's British offices will be/was shut down around midday. I'm not sure on whether this means today (Friday) or tomorrow (Saturday). Probably today, which meant that the network went down like four hours ago..