Am I the only one who's missing old Lucas Arts games? I spent years on Full Throttle, Sam & Max Hit The Road, Day Of The Tentacle and Indiana Jones's Fate Of Atlantis!
I used to work with a company that sent data (mostly video) to all customers via satellite, in multicast. The uplink went through the terrestrial network. IIRC, the whole traffic was sent over UDP.
Ebay's business model is almost perfect: no warehouse, few employees with average qualifications, buildings can be in the middle of nowhere, no suppliers, no stocks, customers take care of themselves. Paypal, on the other hand, requires more customer care - I could be wrong on that but I suppose it does.
I'm going to play silly here. What do they really gain? Is Paypal that profitable or are they just going to push Paypal users towards spending their dollars on ebay?
Who would use 10 Gbit ethernet apart from routers and labs? I know about Moore's law but I also know that 10 Gbit throughput on my hard disk is not coming soon.
There's something my cat Toudouce and I have Alice doesn't: we know we exist. My iMac doesn't know it exists. This is what separates computers from us. My cat is a she, my computer is an it.
Alice sounds like she knows she exists, but in fact she's parroting Richard Wallace's input. Alice is just a fascinating, self-unconscious parrot.
Do any of you OSX folks download the Apache source and do your own compile?
Not from Apple. Only Darwin is Open Source. But there is Fink (see SourceForge) which provides all the GNU GNoods you're used to.
Apple's Apache modules are also open sourced. Anyone could have built a fully functional Apache for Mac OS X. Just check Apple's developers site and you'll see they have plenty of code open sourced.
Have you ever met the engineer who designed the red bridge? He lives near the train station, as a bum. I can't remember his name, but I think he was featured in Ons Staad. He reportedly helps the kids on the block do their maths homework and such. There's also the redhead junkie who used to have a dog. The last time I saw her, she was juggling.
They found large concrete pipes with 5-6 people living inside them. These stories are far more interesting!
Here in Luxembourg, we have kilometers of casemates [pdf]. Only two sites are open to the public, but I've had the chance to explore a couple. Two years ago I saw some graffiti by people who fled underground during air strikes in WWII. I've never met any bums though.
What's your take on the Linux desktop war? situation? Do you think that Gnu/Linux will remain an OS for servers and geeks or that our mothers could some day use it too?
Being liable is clearly a problem if you release your software for free (i use both meanings here). I think software companies should be liable if their software is not free. When you agree to give up money or "freedom" for software, It is my opinion that you should get a quality of service granted in exchange.
This should usually be handled by the invisible hand of competition, but huge software companies are so well-established that they can afford to give up on quality. I think that such a measure would protect the consumer from such abuses.
This is just an idea, it's certainly flawed and incomplete. Does anyone care to contribute?
You have now made your employer aware that you are unhappy. From this day on, your loyalty will always be in question.
Your boss knows you're not working for the bandwidth and his blue eyes. So does mine. I'm loyal, but I'll quit if someone else has a serious offer with a 50% salary increase.
When promotion time comes around, your employer will remember who is loyal and who is not.
When times get tough, your employer will begin the cutbacks with you.
If my employer is satisfied with my work and wants to keep working with me, he'll treat me in a fair way when "promotion time comes around" or "times get tough". Otherwise he knows I'll start considering counteroffers.
Accepting a counteroffer is an insult to your intelligence and a blow to your personal pride; you were bought.
This one made me laugh. Accepting a counteroffer is a compliment to your intelligence; it means you're worth more than what you were getting until now.
[...]
Your company will immediately start looking for a new person at a cheaper price.
In my opinion, that's not your problem. They probably won't find someone much cheaper anyways. If someone offers you to work for them at a higher price, it means they can't find someone cheap on the market.
[...]
The list goes on, the other reasons are factors you should consider, but certainly not good enough to stop you from considering an interesting counteroffer. If the counteroffer's guidelines are more advantageous, why not switch?
Just make sure your employer doesn't get a bad surprise, remember that it is probably a bad idea to mention who made you a counteroffer.
I'm suprised that it took a third party to provide support
As I said in another comment, they probably don't want to. Apple wants as many people as possible to buy their computers. They have a larger margin on iMacs than on iPods. If you were in their shoes, would you pay programmers to develop windows drivers?
Now, they've apparently supported these developers by giving them access to the iPod's specifications. Why? I know many Windows users who would love to get an iPod; however I don't think many of them would buy an iMac because the iPod only works with iTunes.
If Apple's margins on the iPod are larger than I thought, Apple clearly benefits from this software. Windows people start buying iPods, increasing the sales, and Apple does not have to support them, redirecting them to Mediafour or TrentSoft.
Apple wants as many people as possible to buy their computers. They have a larger margin on iMacs than on iPods. If you were in their shoes, would you pay programmers to develop windows drivers?
We're using the word "triangulation" very loosely here because it's a word most people can understand, but purists would not call what GPS does "triangulation" because no angles are involved. It's really "trilateration" or "resection."
Yup. I just used pings as an easy way to measure the distance. I thought that would be the best way to "make it understandable to a layman", but I should definitely have inserted something similar to your text. Thanks for pointing this out! May I quote you on that?
I couldn't open the shockwave thing on Mac OS X though:(
The GPS system calculates your position using GPS too! Here's a little bit about triangulation. I'm using GPS satellites because you get them for cheap in theory land and they come with these cool weightless levers. However you can replace them with 802.11 access points, cell phones, whatever suits you.
Imagine having three satellites on a chess board, the first one on a1, the second one on a8 and the third one on 1h. You're somewhere on the checkboard, and you know where the other satellites are. You know the speed of light is one square per second.
To find out where you are, you take out your brand new iBook and send five pings to the satellite in a8, using radio waves, which are light after all:
--- satellite-a8 ping statistics ---
5 packets transmitted, 5 packets received, 0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max = 14.00/14.00/14.00 s
Light takes fourteen seconds to go to the satellite and back. You now know you're anywhere in a seven squares radius from a8 and decide to ping the satellite in h1:
--- satellite-h1 ping statistics ---
5 packets transmitted, 5 packets received, 0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max = 14.00/14.00/14.00 s
You now know you're also seven squares away from the satellite in h1. You look at your map and understand that you can only be in a1 or h8. How do you find out? You ping the satellite in a1:
--- satellite-a1 ping statistics ---
5 packets transmitted, 5 packets received, 0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max = 22.00/22.00/22.00 s
Looking at this, it becomes clear that you are in h8. You can even use pythagoras to make sure I didn't get the distances wrong:). We use this method to locate any radio device, from the GPS in your car to your iBook.
Specifically, I'm wondering whether each portable device is computing its own location based on the relative intesities of the access points as measured at the device, or the other way around.
Basically, each 802.11 device sends so-called Beacon frames around the network. These frames contain, among other information, the strength of the signal the device is getting. When a device is next to three access points and these access points know their location, it becomes very easy to find out where the device we're tracking is using a small tcpdump script and radio triangulation.
I'd love to play with it, just imagine for example walking around with your laptop in a museum and have full descriptions of the Magritte painting you're looking at, the painter's biography, directions to similar paintings, or reaching the top of mount Evrest and have "Cowboy neal was here" pop up...
I'm getting carried away, but I'd really love to see your code. I suppose you're using the data contained in the beacon frames for this, right?
Dear jcsehak,
I apologize for disturbing you, but you seem to have omitted your slashdot password in the parent post. This could also just be a typo in the password you gave.
Slashdot Mirror
Am I the only one who's missing old Lucas Arts games? I spent years on Full Throttle, Sam & Max Hit The Road, Day Of The Tentacle and Indiana Jones's Fate Of Atlantis!
I used to work with a company that sent data (mostly video) to all customers via satellite, in multicast. The uplink went through the terrestrial network. IIRC, the whole traffic was sent over UDP.
How do I know I exist? Why? Is me knowing I exist related to me knowing that my computer doesn't know it exists and does my computer know I exist?
Is knowing I exist that makes me human or knowing you exist?
Compare to architects.
This is really from the looking-at-PURE-EVIL dept. Or maybe they got hit by a virus.
Ebay's business model is almost perfect: no warehouse, few employees with average qualifications, buildings can be in the middle of nowhere, no suppliers, no stocks, customers take care of themselves. Paypal, on the other hand, requires more customer care - I could be wrong on that but I suppose it does.
I'm going to play silly here. What do they really gain? Is Paypal that profitable or are they just going to push Paypal users towards spending their dollars on ebay?
Who would use 10 Gbit ethernet apart from routers and labs? I know about Moore's law but I also know that 10 Gbit throughput on my hard disk is not coming soon.
The site www.phi-web.co.uk is running Apache/1.3.22 (Unix) [...] on FreeBSD.
There's something my cat Toudouce and I have Alice doesn't: we know we exist. My iMac doesn't know it exists. This is what separates computers from us. My cat is a she, my computer is an it.
Alice sounds like she knows she exists, but in fact she's parroting Richard Wallace's input. Alice is just a fascinating, self-unconscious parrot.
Apple's Apache modules are also open sourced. Anyone could have built a fully functional Apache for Mac OS X. Just check Apple's developers site and you'll see they have plenty of code open sourced.
Have you ever met the engineer who designed the red bridge? He lives near the train station, as a bum. I can't remember his name, but I think he was featured in Ons Staad. He reportedly helps the kids on the block do their maths homework and such. There's also the redhead junkie who used to have a dog. The last time I saw her, she was juggling.
I think we have nice bums, overall.
They found large concrete pipes with 5-6 people living inside them. These stories are far more interesting!
Here in Luxembourg, we have kilometers of casemates [pdf]. Only two sites are open to the public, but I've had the chance to explore a couple. Two years ago I saw some graffiti by people who fled underground during air strikes in WWII. I've never met any bums though.
With omnipresent slashdot, that'd be Mod me up Scotty!
What's your take on the Linux desktop war? situation? Do you think that Gnu/Linux will remain an OS for servers and geeks or that our mothers could some day use it too?
Being liable is clearly a problem if you release your software for free (i use both meanings here). I think software companies should be liable if their software is not free. When you agree to give up money or "freedom" for software, It is my opinion that you should get a quality of service granted in exchange.
This should usually be handled by the invisible hand of competition, but huge software companies are so well-established that they can afford to give up on quality. I think that such a measure would protect the consumer from such abuses.
This is just an idea, it's certainly flawed and incomplete. Does anyone care to contribute?
<meta name="GENERATOR" content="Microsoft FrontPage 4.0">
Good start :)
You have now made your employer aware that you are unhappy. From this day on, your loyalty will always be in question.
Your boss knows you're not working for the bandwidth and his blue eyes. So does mine. I'm loyal, but I'll quit if someone else has a serious offer with a 50% salary increase.
When promotion time comes around, your employer will remember who is loyal and who is not.
When times get tough, your employer will begin the cutbacks with you.
If my employer is satisfied with my work and wants to keep working with me, he'll treat me in a fair way when "promotion time comes around" or "times get tough". Otherwise he knows I'll start considering counteroffers.
Accepting a counteroffer is an insult to your intelligence and a blow to your personal pride; you were bought.
This one made me laugh. Accepting a counteroffer is a compliment to your intelligence; it means you're worth more than what you were getting until now.
[...]
Your company will immediately start looking for a new person at a cheaper price.
In my opinion, that's not your problem. They probably won't find someone much cheaper anyways. If someone offers you to work for them at a higher price, it means they can't find someone cheap on the market.
[...]
The list goes on, the other reasons are factors you should consider, but certainly not good enough to stop you from considering an interesting counteroffer. If the counteroffer's guidelines are more advantageous, why not switch?
Just make sure your employer doesn't get a bad surprise, remember that it is probably a bad idea to mention who made you a counteroffer.
As I said in another comment, they probably don't want to. Apple wants as many people as possible to buy their computers. They have a larger margin on iMacs than on iPods. If you were in their shoes, would you pay programmers to develop windows drivers?
Now, they've apparently supported these developers by giving them access to the iPod's specifications. Why? I know many Windows users who would love to get an iPod; however I don't think many of them would buy an iMac because the iPod only works with iTunes.
If Apple's margins on the iPod are larger than I thought, Apple clearly benefits from this software. Windows people start buying iPods, increasing the sales, and Apple does not have to support them, redirecting them to Mediafour or TrentSoft.
What do you think?
Apple wants as many people as possible to buy their computers. They have a larger margin on iMacs than on iPods. If you were in their shoes, would you pay programmers to develop windows drivers?
We're using the word "triangulation" very loosely here because it's a word most people can understand, but purists would not call what GPS does "triangulation" because no angles are involved. It's really "trilateration" or "resection."
Yup. I just used pings as an easy way to measure the distance. I thought that would be the best way to "make it understandable to a layman", but I should definitely have inserted something similar to your text. Thanks for pointing this out! May I quote you on that?
I couldn't open the shockwave thing on Mac OS X though :(
The GPS system calculates your position using GPS too! Here's a little bit about triangulation. I'm using GPS satellites because you get them for cheap in theory land and they come with these cool weightless levers. However you can replace them with 802.11 access points, cell phones, whatever suits you.
Imagine having three satellites on a chess board, the first one on a1, the second one on a8 and the third one on 1h. You're somewhere on the checkboard, and you know where the other satellites are. You know the speed of light is one square per second.
To find out where you are, you take out your brand new iBook and send five pings to the satellite in a8, using radio waves, which are light after all:
--- satellite-a8 ping statistics ---
5 packets transmitted, 5 packets received, 0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max = 14.00/14.00/14.00 s
Light takes fourteen seconds to go to the satellite and back. You now know you're anywhere in a seven squares radius from a8 and decide to ping the satellite in h1:
--- satellite-h1 ping statistics ---
5 packets transmitted, 5 packets received, 0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max = 14.00/14.00/14.00 s
You now know you're also seven squares away from the satellite in h1. You look at your map and understand that you can only be in a1 or h8. How do you find out? You ping the satellite in a1:
--- satellite-a1 ping statistics ---
5 packets transmitted, 5 packets received, 0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max = 22.00/22.00/22.00 s
Looking at this, it becomes clear that you are in h8. You can even use pythagoras to make sure I didn't get the distances wrong :). We use this method to locate any radio device, from the GPS in your car to your iBook.
Basically, each 802.11 device sends so-called Beacon frames around the network. These frames contain, among other information, the strength of the signal the device is getting. When a device is next to three access points and these access points know their location, it becomes very easy to find out where the device we're tracking is using a small tcpdump script and radio triangulation.
I'd love to play with it, just imagine for example walking around with your laptop in a museum and have full descriptions of the Magritte painting you're looking at, the painter's biography, directions to similar paintings, or reaching the top of mount Evrest and have "Cowboy neal was here" pop up...
I'm getting carried away, but I'd really love to see your code. I suppose you're using the data contained in the beacon frames for this, right?
Dear jcsehak,
I apologize for disturbing you, but you seem to have omitted your slashdot password in the parent post. This could also just be a typo in the password you gave.
Would you please reply with the correct password?
My slashdot password, 8 characters, Karma 50, $30 000. Mail me if you're interested, and I only take cash and/or United Linux licenses.