I've had Sirius since this past march and I have to say that I'm a big fan of the content, but not as big a fan of the sound quality. The Sound quality on the music stations shows quite a bit of obvious compression artifacting. Also, the techo stations seem to have an obscene amount of bass boast present.
All in all though, I've been rather happy with it and I'll gladly continue to fork over the 12.95/month:-)
The consistency surely comes from having the entire codebase to refer to, and the flexibility from people being free to suggest any patches they like to the kernel.
And the OS core group has no communication with the API and apps groups? If that was the case then I certainly wouldn't need a study to tell me something was very wrong.
Yeah, I figured such a response. The funny thing is that most of the applications you mention are all downstream applications and not upstream. Most of the occurences i've heard of people being contacted by their ISP's are for upstream traffic, not down. Why do you think many ISP's put upload caps on their clients but not download?
As for your contributing to the internet assertion, I admit the idea is interesting...but what's the larger contribution: a 500k piece of code uploaded to the net once, or a rip of the latest LOTR dvd? More bits doesn't make it a larger contribution. Heck, how many of the largest contributions to the net were done over modems?
The most common approach taken is the "Well, the only way you could be using this much bandwidth is if you are doing X, Y and Z, all of which are prohibited in your terms of service agreement."
And you know what, I think they're correct. The only ways I can think of to be using this much bandwidth are:
Servers, which are generally prohibited. I'd say most of the ones set up in homes that are using excessive bandwidth are probably transfering some form of copyrighted content. If you hold the copyright and you're giving it away in mass, you're most likely charging for it; in which case you should be using a busines class and not a residential class service.
This also applies to transfering large files regularly back and forth between work. If the files are hundreds of gigs large, they're probably offsite backups of some sort, and not word documents, spreadsheets....drawings.
These are really the major ones that I can think of excluding P2P which is really just another form of a server.
Yeah I know...you all want a T1 for $40.00 a month, and you feel wronged when you don't get it.
It seems like in several cases he's dodging the question...or perhaps just doesn't understand it. for instance:
Of course, a lot of college students who are grabbing music off Kazaa today don't see themselves as doing anything any different from what you did when you were a teenager, copying bootleg Bob Dylan tapes.
The truth is, it's really hard to talk to people about not stealing music when thereOs no legal alternative. The advent of a legal alternative is only six months old.
There's always been a legal alternative to stealing music; buying it. This applies whether it's a tape, cdr, or mp3. What IS the difference to the single person? How does this answear the question in any form at all?
The main issue is self-confidence. Most kids and many younger adults just don't have the self-confidence to stand up for themselves; be it physical or verbal, our even by complete indifference. You also have to understand that many of these bullies are dangling from the finest thread of self-confidence imaginable. All it takes sometimes is one line in the sand to shatter that confidence and gain your peace.
I recall my stands, and I was generaly left alone after that.
MSNBC (Yes I know, I'm too lazy to change my default home page...score one for MS) has this article with a little interesting tidbit at the end:
The phrase "under God" was not part of the original pledge adopted by Congress as a patriotic tribute in 1942, at the height of World War II. Congress inserted the phrase more than a decade later, in 1954, when the world had moved from hot war to cold.
Interesting that these contraversial two words where just an addition to seperate us from those "godless commies", no? Sounds on the whole rather silly now:-/
If you define "using" as "plugged in with electrons flowing through it", then that would be a MS mouse from 93'.
If you define "using" as "serving a useful purpose", then that would be a Macintosh LC II from 92', which is presently being used as a wonderful monitor stand
There will be no TIE fighters until we have friction in space. To be able to turn like an airplane in an atmosphere you need something to react against.
AFAIK, space isn't a perfect vacuum, there is matter in space, just that it's concentrations are extraordinarily low. You'd need either a very large control surface, or some method of increasing friction over what limited matter there is. Why do we use brake pads on a car and not say, bars of moist Ivory? Same reason.
Also, there is also free energy in space...particularly in a solar system. I'm not sure if light energy is believed to be particulate this week, but is it possible that photons or other forms of high frequenty energy could be used as a repuslive force? There's still quite a bit we don't understand about this stuff, and though at this point it's still probably the rhelm of science fiction, It's not impossible.
Remember, there are no fictionless surfaces, no perfect vacuums, no perfect superconductors, only asymptoticly approaching approximations.
-Chris
PS - I apologize in advance for the above average number of typos and possible flaws in knowledge and logic....I'm on an iMac today;-)
Your A/C is a 230V circuit. It draw power actually from two different, out of phase supplies
Most residential service (here in the US anyway)is in fact 3 wire single phase service. Each of the two wires is 120V to ground, while from hot to hot is 240V. If the two legs were simply 2 of the 3 legs of a 3-phase sytem, the voltage from hot to hot would be 208V (120*sqrt(3)). If the two legs were a 2 phase system, each leg would be 180 degrees out of phase, and the phases would cancel each other out.
Did anyone else notice a strobing effect in their fluorescent lighting in those 20-30 seconds before the full power outage? My understanding is that any sort of arc lamp (fluorescent, metal halide) will extinguish if the voltage sags beyond a certain point, so I doubt it could have been a voltage sag before the full blackout.
It almost seemed as if the power frequency itself had gone unstable...say from a nominal 60Hz to like 5Hz. Then again, with the modern electronic ballasts used today, who knows how they respond to a voltage sag. Maybe they strobe. Any one have any thoughts on this?
A high voltage electrical arc can be 4 times hotter then the surface of the sun.
Is that really someplace you'd like to be?
-Chris
PS - On a side note, I've stared at 480V copper buses capaple of supplying over 65,000 Amps during a ground fault. You'd be surprised how strong the impulse is to just reach out and touch the shiney copper bar. Mistakes are easier to make then you might think:-)
" do not remember the figures, but this is the reason why AC was chosen for power distribution, even though there were various factions hyping the danger of using AC (electrocution and such)."
I'd say it had more to do with the difficulty in steping up and steping down voltages for long distance transmission before the advent of power electronics. Compare this to a common transformer which was well within the technology of the late 1800's. Actually, besides the transmformer problem, DC systems are actually quite a bit less complicated then AC. Also, for longer runs they're also cheaper.
You should read about the Edison & Westinghouse battle for a practical power distribution system. It's pretty interesting.
-Chris
Shouldn't computers be getting cooler?
on
The Diamond Age
·
· Score: 1
My first PC, a 486SX 25Mhz ran without a fan or heatsink besides the one in it's 120 Watt power supply. This was back in 1993.
Now, 10 years later, My CPU alone is putting out more heat then my desk lamp, requires a heat sink large enough to require bolting to the computer chasis, and a power supply 4 times that of my 1993 equivelant.
Now I ask you, what is happening here? Nearly every other technology has gotten cooler, and more effcient, yet desktop machines have not. My question is, why?
Is it marketing? Have manufacturers been pushed by competition to push their chips as far as they can possibly go with each generation?
Or has power and heat just been deamed unimportant? Something to be worried about by the integrators and not by the marketing guys? I know it certainly can't be a boon for reliability, but how long is a typical desktop machine expected to last anyway?
Or is there a technical reason? You could design cooler chips by increasing the effciency of each gate. Is the effciency of the gate limited by the process? Or is it just faster and cheaper to shrink the die?
What shall we use...To fill...the empty... spaces...Where...we used...to talk?
For some it's drugs, for others booze....and yet for others gadgets. They're always there for you and they never question you.
Rather then develop any sort of lasting personal relationships, a person can just continuely obsess about that new gadget you want. Once i get that new wireless phone/pda, I'll finally be cool; I'll finally be happy.
(ok slightly FUD because CSS was a poor algorithm)
...which may also be FUD, as CSS isn't that bad an algorithm afaik. The reason CSS failed is the same reason many fairly strong encryption methods have failed: key management. It doesn't matter how good your algorithm is if a manufacturer messes up and includes both public and private unciphered keys in their product code. AFAIK, all the modern rippers still exploit a set list of known keys, it's just that the list has gotten a bit longer over the past few years.
Again, it all comes down to key management, and eventually beyond that, people making mistakes.
"As one industry observer pointed out when he first heard the Infinium Labs story, "You buy the console. You buy the games. Then you pay to play the games you bought on the console you bought. It's sort of like buying an arcade game but still having to put quarters in. And ads!"
Sounds like Circuit City's DIVX to me. God knows that went well.
I've just read the article 3 times and I have to ask; what part of it deals with open source? It's a TH article for christ sakes....are you slashdot editors just reading tag lines now?
Look guys, not everything MS does is an attack on open source. OS might be a threat, but it's hardly their only threat.
Slashdot Mirror
Well my issue is that I have all kenwood equipment, so I'm rather locked into it if I want a nicely integrated package.
-Chris
I've had Sirius since this past march and I have to say that I'm a big fan of the content, but not as big a fan of the sound quality. The Sound quality on the music stations shows quite a bit of obvious compression artifacting. Also, the techo stations seem to have an obscene amount of bass boast present.
/month :-)
All in all though, I've been rather happy with it and I'll gladly continue to fork over the 12.95
-Chris
That may have been one of the worst graphs I've ever seen. Com'on guys...havn't we heard of intervals?
-Chris
And the OS core group has no communication with the API and apps groups? If that was the case then I certainly wouldn't need a study to tell me something was very wrong.
-Chris
Yeah, I figured such a response. The funny thing is that most of the applications you mention are all downstream applications and not upstream. Most of the occurences i've heard of people being contacted by their ISP's are for upstream traffic, not down. Why do you think many ISP's put upload caps on their clients but not download?
As for your contributing to the internet assertion, I admit the idea is interesting...but what's the larger contribution: a 500k piece of code uploaded to the net once, or a rip of the latest LOTR dvd? More bits doesn't make it a larger contribution. Heck, how many of the largest contributions to the net were done over modems?
-Chris
The most common approach taken is the "Well, the only way you could be using this much bandwidth is if you are doing X, Y and Z, all of which are prohibited in your terms of service agreement."
And you know what, I think they're correct. The only ways I can think of to be using this much bandwidth are:
Servers, which are generally prohibited. I'd say most of the ones set up in homes that are using excessive bandwidth are probably transfering some form of copyrighted content. If you hold the copyright and you're giving it away in mass, you're most likely charging for it; in which case you should be using a busines class and not a residential class service.
This also applies to transfering large files regularly back and forth between work. If the files are hundreds of gigs large, they're probably offsite backups of some sort, and not word documents, spreadsheets....drawings.
These are really the major ones that I can think of excluding P2P which is really just another form of a server.
Yeah I know...you all want a T1 for $40.00 a month, and you feel wronged when you don't get it.
-Chris
It seems like in several cases he's dodging the question...or perhaps just doesn't understand it. for instance:
There's always been a legal alternative to stealing music; buying it. This applies whether it's a tape, cdr, or mp3. What IS the difference to the single person? How does this answear the question in any form at all?
-Chris
The main issue is self-confidence. Most kids and many younger adults just don't have the self-confidence to stand up for themselves; be it physical or verbal, our even by complete indifference. You also have to understand that many of these bullies are dangling from the finest thread of self-confidence imaginable. All it takes sometimes is one line in the sand to shatter that confidence and gain your peace.
I recall my stands, and I was generaly left alone after that.
-Chris
MSNBC (Yes I know, I'm too lazy to change my default home page...score one for MS) has this article with a little interesting tidbit at the end:
The phrase "under God" was not part of the original pledge adopted by Congress as a patriotic tribute in 1942, at the height of World War II. Congress inserted the phrase more than a decade later, in 1954, when the world had moved from hot war to cold.
Interesting that these contraversial two words where just an addition to seperate us from those "godless commies", no? Sounds on the whole rather silly now :-/
-Chris
Tricky.
If you define "using" as "plugged in with electrons flowing through it", then that would be a MS mouse from 93'.
If you define "using" as "serving a useful purpose", then that would be a Macintosh LC II from 92', which is presently being used as a wonderful monitor stand
-Chris
Only room for the words "Mostly Harmless"? I'll pass on that, thank you very much. Now where's my towel...
-Chris
Man, wouldn't that make for easy to use rippers:
2 minutes to rip vs 6 hours. Sign me up!
-Chris
There will be no TIE fighters until we have friction in space. To be able to turn like an airplane in an atmosphere you need something to react against.
AFAIK, space isn't a perfect vacuum, there is matter in space, just that it's concentrations are extraordinarily low. You'd need either a very large control surface, or some method of increasing friction over what limited matter there is. Why do we use brake pads on a car and not say, bars of moist Ivory? Same reason.
Also, there is also free energy in space...particularly in a solar system. I'm not sure if light energy is believed to be particulate this week, but is it possible that photons or other forms of high frequenty energy could be used as a repuslive force? There's still quite a bit we don't understand about this stuff, and though at this point it's still probably the rhelm of science fiction, It's not impossible. Remember, there are no fictionless surfaces, no perfect vacuums, no perfect superconductors, only asymptoticly approaching approximations.
-Chris
PS - I apologize in advance for the above average number of typos and possible flaws in knowledge and logic....I'm on an iMac today ;-)
-Chris
Your A/C is a 230V circuit. It draw power actually from two different, out of phase supplies
Most residential service (here in the US anyway)is in fact 3 wire single phase service. Each of the two wires is 120V to ground, while from hot to hot is 240V. If the two legs were simply 2 of the 3 legs of a 3-phase sytem, the voltage from hot to hot would be 208V (120*sqrt(3)). If the two legs were a 2 phase system, each leg would be 180 degrees out of phase, and the phases would cancel each other out.
-Chris
"It's a highly technical term that refers to the frequency of the AC sine wave of electric power that is delivered over your lines."
Wait a minute, could that be the problem? I hear in Canada they use cosine waves. ;-)
-Chris
Did anyone else notice a strobing effect in their fluorescent lighting in those 20-30 seconds before the full power outage? My understanding is that any sort of arc lamp (fluorescent, metal halide) will extinguish if the voltage sags beyond a certain point, so I doubt it could have been a voltage sag before the full blackout.
It almost seemed as if the power frequency itself had gone unstable...say from a nominal 60Hz to like 5Hz. Then again, with the modern electronic ballasts used today, who knows how they respond to a voltage sag. Maybe they strobe. Any one have any thoughts on this?
-Chris
A high voltage electrical arc can be 4 times hotter then the surface of the sun.
Is that really someplace you'd like to be?
-Chris
PS - On a side note, I've stared at 480V copper buses capaple of supplying over 65,000 Amps during a ground fault. You'd be surprised how strong the impulse is to just reach out and touch the shiney copper bar. Mistakes are easier to make then you might think :-)
" do not remember the figures, but this is the reason why AC was chosen for power distribution, even though there were various factions hyping the danger of using AC (electrocution and such)."
I'd say it had more to do with the difficulty in steping up and steping down voltages for long distance transmission before the advent of power electronics. Compare this to a common transformer which was well within the technology of the late 1800's. Actually, besides the transmformer problem, DC systems are actually quite a bit less complicated then AC. Also, for longer runs they're also cheaper.
You should read about the Edison & Westinghouse battle for a practical power distribution system. It's pretty interesting.
-Chris
My first PC, a 486SX 25Mhz ran without a fan or heatsink besides the one in it's 120 Watt power supply. This was back in 1993.
Now, 10 years later, My CPU alone is putting out more heat then my desk lamp, requires a heat sink large enough to require bolting to the computer chasis, and a power supply 4 times that of my 1993 equivelant.
Now I ask you, what is happening here? Nearly every other technology has gotten cooler, and more effcient, yet desktop machines have not. My question is, why?
Is it marketing? Have manufacturers been pushed by competition to push their chips as far as they can possibly go with each generation?
Or has power and heat just been deamed unimportant? Something to be worried about by the integrators and not by the marketing guys? I know it certainly can't be a boon for reliability, but how long is a typical desktop machine expected to last anyway?
Or is there a technical reason? You could design cooler chips by increasing the effciency of each gate. Is the effciency of the gate limited by the process? Or is it just faster and cheaper to shrink the die?
At best, food for thought. At worse, a mere rant.
-Chris
What shall we use...To fill...the empty... spaces...Where...we used...to talk?
For some it's drugs, for others booze....and yet for others gadgets. They're always there for you and they never question you.
Rather then develop any sort of lasting personal relationships, a person can just continuely obsess about that new gadget you want. Once i get that new wireless phone/pda, I'll finally be cool; I'll finally be happy.
-Chris
I can see the new ad campaign now:
Osama Inside(tm)
ba bing ba bing...
-Chris
...which may also be FUD, as CSS isn't that bad an algorithm afaik. The reason CSS failed is the same reason many fairly strong encryption methods have failed: key management. It doesn't matter how good your algorithm is if a manufacturer messes up and includes both public and private unciphered keys in their product code. AFAIK, all the modern rippers still exploit a set list of known keys, it's just that the list has gotten a bit longer over the past few years.
Again, it all comes down to key management, and eventually beyond that, people making mistakes.
-Chris
"As one industry observer pointed out when he first heard the Infinium Labs story, "You buy the console. You buy the games. Then you pay to play the games you bought on the console you bought. It's sort of like buying an arcade game but still having to put quarters in. And ads!"
Sounds like Circuit City's DIVX to me. God knows that went well.
-Chris
I've just read the article 3 times and I have to ask; what part of it deals with open source? It's a TH article for christ sakes....are you slashdot editors just reading tag lines now?
Look guys, not everything MS does is an attack on open source. OS might be a threat, but it's hardly their only threat.
-Chris