At least in here Finland, mobile operators have very different billing schemes. One operator charges only static monthly (very reasonable) cost of GPRS usage, with no limits on data transferred - which is a great way to promote GPRS to public. Some operators on another hand have ridicilously high rates on data transfers, most likely their services are rarely used.
In practice this means that you will pay the price you are ready to pay for that service.And it is up to economists to figure out what you're ready to pay, not up to you.;-)
Fast paced action games are only one genre of gaming. For large simulations, like World War II Online, stability of the platform is crucial. Windows is the current de-facto platform for gaming, but these huge (and addictive) simulated worlds are not something you can play for only five minutes. Basically your computer has to stay bluescreen-free for numerous of hours.
It isn't that windows couldn't do that - the problem is that the hardware platforms for gaming OS varies alot. Different chipsets, different display controllers, different game controllers - and drivers for all of these. Not to mention all those "handy" programs many people keep running even while playing. Stability problems are inevitable.
This is one thing why consoles are a good - hardware stays the same. But rarely they pack the processing power, memory and needed interfaces for playing these magnificent simulations, and they can't be upgraded when a new powerful processor or some other component comes available.
Conclusion: long live PC as a gaming platform! (Hopefully the software platform will stabilize some day)
Slashdot has gone downhill for long time already - some time ago, articles were even interesting, then the selection has degraded into introducing marginally nice toys, and now hoaxes.
Looks like some people even believe in this hoax. Maybe this is a marketing study, where they try to measure if it is profitable to sell some new "technical miracle" to unsuspecting people.
Some audiophiles claim that vinyl records are the best way to store sound, as there is no analog/digital conversion in the signal path, and that the sound is more natural with vinyl.
Some of those people pay hundreds of euros per meter of loudspeaker cable - and maybe they even don't realize that they have a RIAA decoder in their audio equipment - analog sound processing in precious signal path!
I can't see why anyone should be ashamed of a little of signal processing, may it be digital or analog. It is *always* done, for different reasons, but still.
I don't what is the situation over there, but in here Finland it is possible to buy guaranteed bandwidth. It isn't reasonable for consumers needs, but if you happen to be a multisite company, it is nice to know you always get the bandwidth you need.
ISP guarantees this bandwidth inside their own network, naturally they can't promise more bandwidth than providing sites can put out.
"Overselling" is a common and well known practice, and has been used (and is still used) with phonelines, cellphones, etc. Everyone just don't talk at the same time, or pull full downstream 24/7 - altough some people manage to get close.
Netperf is a good way to test throughput, available for many platforms also - even windows is supported, which is rare thing with good tools.;-)
Unfortunately, you need a opposing server on the other side of the net segment you want to test, and this is really difficult to come up with in some cases. Passive logging and creating traffic is a good way in case like this. MRTG is a nice way to visualize the results, as people already have mentioned few times.
There are encryption systems for windows which are rather straightforward to install and use. For Linux, that is whole different case. It might be because of U.S. export limitations, I'm not sure, but there just is no easy to install and use encryption available for Linux.
I have been happy user of international linux kernel patches and encrypted loopback mounts. It is just rather difficult to set up, and I wouldn't recommend it to beginners, as it might scare them off. PPDD project seems to be developing interestingly again, though.
Using power lines for data transfers is rather stupid - those lines just aren't designed to transmit high frequencies. Losses are high, and cabling acts as a bad antenna. If taken in use in high scale, this will bring up the RF noise levels in areas where it is in use. For radio amateurs, this means that reception will be bad, and only way to get through is to use high power levels. These mentioned interference problems were solved by spreading the used spectrum more - which only distributes the noise into wider band.
Eavesdropping will be also ridicilously easy with PLC.
Those who get allergic symptoms from electric fields, might want to react on this also, as PLC radiates a lot from cabling meant to use with low frequencies only. (50Hz in here)
Calming down enemy troops would be at least stupid move. One would just be facing calmly shooting soldiers whose hand doesn't shake, aren't afraid, don't think pain or wounds so negatively as they could.
And cannabis - well. Great way to relax and shake off the stress of war. Might be that it would even benefit the "victim" of the "pot attack".
I was visiting Stockholm with my wife, as some of her relatives live around there. We went to see the Wasa ships wreck into Wasa museum, and when the visit was about to end, one swede said to me the line on subject: "You Finns have nothing like this."
I agreed, as our ships have always had a tendency of floating, instead of sinking immediately after sailing out from port.
It is a nice museum to visit, I can warmly recommend that if you ever visit Stockholm.
PS. If you have the opportunity, please ask how's the statue of Finnish runner, Paavo Nurmi, nowdays. It was found from the Wasa..;-)
No matter how you try to play whack-a-mole with facts as your hammer and nonsense-journos as moles, they always come up with something stupid like this.
It almost feels organized already - maybe they are trying to create a new business, motivated by peoples fear of something they can't see. Looking at examples, this marketing strategy has been really successful - look at all people who believe in some kind of gods, angels, demons - they are really easy people to suck money from or, for example, fly airplanes into buildings.
One question remains: is there someone behind this, trying to set up new business with this FUD, or is this just group behaviour of weasel journos?
Virus distribution has been illegal in here.fi for some time. Unfortunately nobody hasn't yet made illegal using the most effective weapon of virus distribution - Microsoft Outlook. I hope they wake up some day.
At least in here where I live, old peoples homes and homes for handicapped people often have a cat or even few of them as pets. Having pets makes people living in there feel more like home - petting a cat is also a great way to get rid of stress.
Taking care of pets needs is often good therapeutical activity for people who live in such places.
There is quite alot wrong still how people deal with animals, like treat them like objects which can be thrown away when they are not funny anymore. I don't know if these pet robots alter peoples behaviour in direction or another, but if people don't take care of their responsibility of taking care of real animals, I don't see why having a toy to not to take care of would be a worse option.
Nice indeed
on
Tool Box PC
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Those toolboxes are rather cheap to buy. Pity they don't offer too much EMI protection as metal cases do. Those computers are rather noisy thingies what comes to radio frequencies..
Anyway, that case seems rather well built and easy to carry around. Optimum would be that everything including game controllers and flat screen display would fit into box.
This is much nicer solution than the urethane foam mess which was admired here a little time ago. (Hey, you can cast your computer in concrete and it still might work - it is not too smart though.)
ID chips have been used with animals for a while already - it is rather handy way of registering pets, as they tend to be less verbal when they are asked where they live.
With humans.. Well. The implanted ID chip that can be easily read without the carrier of chip knowing definately wouldn't be a solution to regocnition problems, fakes can be made as well as passports and ID cards can be faked.
"Big brother" style monitoring could be one application, altough it would be really expensive to put in use - imagine the amount of monitoring terminals needed. It is far more convenient to get the monitored human to want to carry a unit with unique ID which is able to report its position and what the monitored human is saying. Motivation for carrying such unit could be, lets say, fashion or its benefits on making life easier.
Really useful use could be to put the implant in if the carrier has a disease which must be taken in account in medical treatment - tattoos and jewellery do this task better though, as they don't require any fancy electronics to work.
Adult people are expected to take off potentially dangerous items when situation requires, at least that's the policy with insurance companies. For example, you have to take off rings and not wear loose clothes when using machinery. Children seldom possess this kind of ability to reason.
It seems that this device is difficult to remove from wrist, which is obiviously a danger itself. It isn't a great danger, but I'd like to see this unit to break loose when twisted before the bones break.
I have a feeling that when salaries weren't paid, it wasn't because people paying salaries were evil, it was because they didn't have anywhere to get that money from.
You have to sell products in order to get income - It looks to me that Loki was based on trust on community to buy the games if they make them. I've bought their products, and I am happy about them, even if they are not free. They are good products for platform that is free and kind I like. People should rethink before they apply the "all software should be free"-card on recreational products, they might be the ones draining the well.
I hope none of you did pirate those fine products.
If you look at wound ballistics, it can't hurt you much more to have some nasty chemicals involved. Specially 5.45mm NATO bullet does rather nasty mess of the target, instead of whizzing through and making a clean hole. These problems can be reduced though, the battery can be located so that it most likely would be on the side of the exit wound.
What really made me wonder, was that as you have electric current going through the cloth, you will also generate electromagnetic field, which can be detected. This field could be used as one of the triggering signals for smart mines, or maybe to remotely detect where these heated troops are having a comfortable walk.
Chemical heaters would be a solution for this, but some problems still stay; you would also have to reload chemical heaters some way, and you can't quickly turn them off.
Idea of using the bodyheat as heat source isn't bad at all, even if it used for ages.:-) Body will also adapt into colder climate by generating more heat.
Take a look at IL-2 if you feel like 1st person shooters and CC-derivatives are getting a little boring.
At least it is refreshing for me, as I've rather fed up with pro-US-balance and tweaks in other simulators.
Slashdot Mirror
At least in here Finland, mobile operators have very different billing schemes. One operator charges only static monthly (very reasonable) cost of GPRS usage, with no limits on data transferred - which is a great way to promote GPRS to public. Some operators on another hand have ridicilously high rates on data transfers, most likely their services are rarely used.
;-)
In practice this means that you will pay the price you are ready to pay for that service.And it is up to economists to figure out what you're ready to pay, not up to you.
It isn't that windows couldn't do that - the problem is that the hardware platforms for gaming OS varies alot. Different chipsets, different display controllers, different game controllers - and drivers for all of these. Not to mention all those "handy" programs many people keep running even while playing. Stability problems are inevitable. This is one thing why consoles are a good - hardware stays the same. But rarely they pack the processing power, memory and needed interfaces for playing these magnificent simulations, and they can't be upgraded when a new powerful processor or some other component comes available.
Conclusion: long live PC as a gaming platform! (Hopefully the software platform will stabilize some day)
Slashdot has gone downhill for long time already - some time ago, articles were even interesting, then the selection has degraded into introducing marginally nice toys, and now hoaxes.
/. personell has been lobotomized?-)
Maybe
Looks like some people even believe in this hoax. Maybe this is a marketing study, where they try to measure if it is profitable to sell some new "technical miracle" to unsuspecting people.
Some audiophiles claim that vinyl records are the best way to store sound, as there is no analog/digital conversion in the signal path, and that the sound is more natural with vinyl.
Some of those people pay hundreds of euros per meter of loudspeaker cable - and maybe they even don't realize that they have a RIAA decoder in their audio equipment - analog sound processing in precious signal path!
I can't see why anyone should be ashamed of a little of signal processing, may it be digital or analog. It is *always* done, for different reasons, but still.
Why emulate? It is a P3 afterall - why not run games natively?
I don't what is the situation over there, but in here Finland it is possible to buy guaranteed bandwidth. It isn't reasonable for consumers needs, but if you happen to be a multisite company, it is nice to know you always get the bandwidth you need.
ISP guarantees this bandwidth inside their own network, naturally they can't promise more bandwidth than providing sites can put out.
"Overselling" is a common and well known practice, and has been used (and is still used) with phonelines, cellphones, etc. Everyone just don't talk at the same time, or pull full downstream 24/7 - altough some people manage to get close.
Netperf is a good way to test throughput, available for many platforms also - even windows is supported, which is rare thing with good tools. ;-)
Unfortunately, you need a opposing server on the other side of the net segment you want to test, and this is really difficult to come up with in some cases. Passive logging and creating traffic is a good way in case like this. MRTG is a nice way to visualize the results, as people already have mentioned few times.
One word: regedit
There are encryption systems for windows which are rather straightforward to install and use. For Linux, that is whole different case. It might be because of U.S. export limitations, I'm not sure, but there just is no easy to install and use encryption available for Linux.
I have been happy user of international linux kernel patches and encrypted loopback mounts. It is just rather difficult to set up, and I wouldn't recommend it to beginners, as it might scare them off. PPDD project seems to be developing interestingly again, though.
Using power lines for data transfers is rather stupid - those lines just aren't designed to transmit high frequencies. Losses are high, and cabling acts as a bad antenna. If taken in use in high scale, this will bring up the RF noise levels in areas where it is in use.
For radio amateurs, this means that reception will be bad, and only way to get through is to use high power levels.
These mentioned interference problems were solved by spreading the used spectrum more - which only distributes the noise into wider band.
Eavesdropping will be also ridicilously easy with PLC.
Those who get allergic symptoms from electric fields, might want to react on this also, as PLC radiates a lot from cabling meant to use with low frequencies only. (50Hz in here)
Calming down enemy troops would be at least stupid move. One would just be facing calmly shooting soldiers whose hand doesn't shake, aren't afraid, don't think pain or wounds so negatively as they could.
And cannabis - well. Great way to relax and shake off the stress of war. Might be that it would even benefit the "victim" of the "pot attack".
I was visiting Stockholm with my wife, as some of her relatives live around there. We went to see the Wasa ships wreck into Wasa museum, and when the visit was about to end, one swede said to me the line on subject: "You Finns have nothing like this."
;-)
I agreed, as our ships have always had a tendency of floating, instead of sinking immediately after sailing out from port.
It is a nice museum to visit, I can warmly recommend that if you ever visit Stockholm.
PS. If you have the opportunity, please ask how's the statue of Finnish runner, Paavo Nurmi, nowdays. It was found from the Wasa..
No matter how you try to play whack-a-mole with facts as your hammer and nonsense-journos as moles, they always come up with something stupid like this.
It almost feels organized already - maybe they are trying to create a new business, motivated by peoples fear of something they can't see. Looking at examples, this marketing strategy has been really successful - look at all people who believe in some kind of gods, angels, demons - they are really easy people to suck money from or, for example, fly airplanes into buildings.
One question remains: is there someone behind this, trying to set up new business with this FUD, or is this just group behaviour of weasel journos?
Virus distribution has been illegal in here .fi for some time. Unfortunately nobody hasn't yet made illegal using the most effective weapon of virus distribution - Microsoft Outlook. I hope they wake up some day.
At least in here where I live, old peoples homes and homes for handicapped people often have a cat or even few of them as pets. Having pets makes people living in there feel more like home - petting a cat is also a great way to get rid of stress.
Taking care of pets needs is often good therapeutical activity for people who live in such places.
There is quite alot wrong still how people deal with animals, like treat them like objects which can be thrown away when they are not funny anymore. I don't know if these pet robots alter peoples behaviour in direction or another, but if people don't take care of their responsibility of taking care of real animals, I don't see why having a toy to not to take care of would be a worse option.
Those toolboxes are rather cheap to buy. Pity they don't offer too much EMI protection as metal cases do. Those computers are rather noisy thingies what comes to radio frequencies..
Anyway, that case seems rather well built and easy to carry around. Optimum would be that everything including game controllers and flat screen display would fit into box.
This is much nicer solution than the urethane foam mess which was admired here a little time ago. (Hey, you can cast your computer in concrete and it still might work - it is not too smart though.)
ID chips have been used with animals for a while already - it is rather handy way of registering pets, as they tend to be less verbal when they are asked where they live.
With humans.. Well. The implanted ID chip that can be easily read without the carrier of chip knowing definately wouldn't be a solution to regocnition problems, fakes can be made as well as passports and ID cards can be faked.
"Big brother" style monitoring could be one application, altough it would be really expensive to put in use - imagine the amount of monitoring terminals needed.
It is far more convenient to get the monitored human to want to carry a unit with unique ID which is able to report its position and what the monitored human is saying. Motivation for carrying such unit could be, lets say, fashion or its benefits on making life easier.
Really useful use could be to put the implant in if the carrier has a disease which must be taken in account in medical treatment - tattoos and jewellery do this task better though, as they don't require any fancy electronics to work.
Adult people are expected to take off potentially dangerous items when situation requires, at least that's the policy with insurance companies. For example, you have to take off rings and not wear loose clothes when using machinery. Children seldom possess this kind of ability to reason.
It seems that this device is difficult to remove from wrist, which is obiviously a danger itself. It isn't a great danger, but I'd like to see this unit to break loose when twisted before the bones break.
I have a feeling that when salaries weren't paid, it wasn't because people paying salaries were evil, it was because they didn't have anywhere to get that money from.
You have to sell products in order to get income - It looks to me that Loki was based on trust on community to buy the games if they make them. I've bought their products, and I am happy about them, even if they are not free. They are good products for platform that is free and kind I like.
People should rethink before they apply the "all software should be free"-card on recreational products, they might be the ones draining the well.
I hope none of you did pirate those fine products.
If you look at wound ballistics, it can't hurt you much more to have some nasty chemicals involved. Specially 5.45mm NATO bullet does rather nasty mess of the target, instead of whizzing through and making a clean hole.
:-) Body will also adapt into colder climate by generating more heat.
These problems can be reduced though, the battery can be located so that it most likely would be on the side of the exit wound.
What really made me wonder, was that as you have electric current going through the cloth, you will also generate electromagnetic field, which can be detected. This field could be used as one of the triggering signals for smart mines, or maybe to remotely detect where these heated troops are having a comfortable walk.
Chemical heaters would be a solution for this, but some problems still stay; you would also have to reload chemical heaters some way, and you can't quickly turn them off.
Idea of using the bodyheat as heat source isn't bad at all, even if it used for ages.
Take a look at IL-2 if you feel like 1st person shooters and CC-derivatives are getting a little boring.
At least it is refreshing for me, as I've rather fed up with pro-US-balance and tweaks in other simulators.