When deciding if you're going to bother with 802.11b or g, you need to ask yourself what you're going to use it for. It is unlikely that your inbound pipeline will be more than 12mbps, and it's also unlikely that the users will want to spend a lot of time swapping files. Intranet gaming also takes much less bandwidth than this for the ten or so machines that the typical router will support. With that in mind, 802.11b should be more than adequate.
A warning, though. Don't go into this assuming that it'll be maintenance free. I run one of these for the local neighbors, and they're regularly calling me up to find out what's wrong with the connection. Run it for a month or so without charging people. This will both hook your customers on the idea of having it available, and give you the time to figure out the best location of your router, how much regular maintenance your system will take, and if it's worth your effort.
This may seem naive, but what prevents us from including a magnetic core in our interplanetary space craft? The weight for that kind fo thing has to be a lot less than the weight of sheilding.
Someone please rate this guy's moderation as unfair. If the original poster can take pot shots at people's political views, it shouldn't be offtopic to point out the factual falicies in the post.
Just in case anyone is curious, I'm in Denver, it's 8:22pm, and we can't see anything. Either the thing isn't on yet, it's too misty here to see it at this distance, or it's not a visible light laser. Bummer, I was looking forward to the lights show.
It does seem that the process for creating patents is largely incapable of determining the validity of patents. It works more like a sanity check, and barely that.
Considering this, it would make more sense if it were cheaper for external entities to challenge patents after they were created. As things stand, it takes thousands, or sometimes tens of thousands of dollars to challenge even the most obviously flawed patent.
We could, for instance, create a standard reveiw process where an individual presents evidence of patent conflict or prior art. Since the claimant is doing much of the research in advance, the cost should be considerably less.
Oddly enough, real life is starting to resemble the Usenet. A few tidbits of useful information floating in a sea of refuse. This is why effective information mining tools are necessary. I quake with fear at the thought of Microsoft taking over Google.
This guy gets the silly idea that seagoing pirates were not bad guys by doing something called "research".
I think that we differ in the definition of the term "bad guy". Just because a person is sanctioned by some government to murder and steal doesn't mean that they are the good guys. Government sanctioned thugs are still thugs.
Admittedly, both pirates and american revolutionaries were people who wanted to live under their own law. This alone isn't enough of a differentiation until you identify whether "their law" involves killing and pillaging as a way of life.
The guy's whole point is that....They were somewhere in the middle, living brutal lives, but they were also trying to escape the oppressive British (or French or Dutch) rule, and were caught up in the politics of their time.
The only real difference between a hero and a villain is how they react to injustice. Heros try to fix it, villains create more.
Actually, the author's point was that Captain Kidd was someone caught up in political scheming, not that all pirates were that way. Most pirates are really just seagoing highwaymen.
This is silly.
on
Pirate Hunter
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Why is it that this guy thinks that the seagoing pirates were good guys? Certainly we've romanticized that kind of pirate, but this is a form of social blindness purposefully done in the name of entertainment.
The original pirates were just guys who lived outside the law by stealing whatever they could from those who went outside law's reach. We've romanticized them because of their freedom.
In a few specific cases, those who we call pirates were actually acting in protest of (or in the pay of) one government or another. Today we have Terrorists vs. Freedom Fighters, but back then they had Pirates vs. Privateers. No real difference if you're on the wrong end of things.
I've been typing Dvorak for about ten years now, but I've found it virtually impossible to use just dvorak. Too many other people wind up using my machine. For the fun of it, I refer to my keyboard as being "encrypted" when it's in the dvorak mapping.
Reason I switched: Because it would be cool. However, I agree that it bothers my wrists a whole lot less, although I don't really notice a typing speed difference. I haven't actually tested in a while, but last I checked my qwerty speed was over 100. After a while, it just doesn't matter.
I've been asked to sign that kind of agreement about three times in my career, and every time I have declined on the grounds that it would give them rights to my web site, any code that I wrote to update Opensource projects, and even personal emails that I write to my family while at home.
In no case I have ever seen was a person actually fired for not signing one of these. On the other hand, I've never been in a situation where I had to sign one of those to get hired in the first place. Are there any actual experiences out there in that direction?
Actually, most of the original Matrix movie was stolen from a book called The Wonderland Gambit, Book One: The Cybernetic Walrus written by Jack L Chalker (more famous for his Well of Souls series). The first twenty minutes or so was essentially identical to the first two chapters of his book. This was so much true that I looked for his name in the credits the first time I watched the movie. He also wrote a book entitled The Identity Matrix, which was a bit of a different concept, so apparently the authors of the Matrix mixed and matched from Chalker's ideas.
Last I heard, Chalker was planning on suing the writers for theft of his ideas, but I have no idea where that went.
Another equally plausible explaination is future shock. As a software engineer who is perpetually needing to cram new technologies into my brain just to tread water, I tend to feel that I get enough of technology in the real world. Even the most technically disinclined are being forced to interact with machines on a daily basis.
Our world has become a perpetual learning curve. If I want escapism, I turn to magic, which defies comprehension and, therefore, requires no thought.
Ok, let's get back to basics. When determining what the resultant sound quality is like, you have to consider three things:
1. The quality of the recording 2. The quality of the playback system 3. The environment in which you listen to it.
The third one is something that most people just plain forget. If your environment drowns out all the detail, then there is no point in having a high quality playback system or recording.
Here are a few guidelines for MP3 compression:
96kb/s: At this level, you will notice the drop in all environments except the worst. This quality is only good if you are planning to listen to the music in the car, on a crowded street, or play it as light background music (or if you have a tin ear).
128kb/s: This level of compression is generally indistiguishable from CD quality when played through a typical PA system, or at loud parties. The room acoustics will generally distort the sound more than the compression will.
196kb/s: This compression rate is about the maximum sound quality that matters for standard PC speakers in a room full of white noise generators. High quality PA systems in an acoustically arranged room also fall here.
256 or 320kb/s: You would need a good stereo in a quiet room to tell this from CD audio. Yes, there is a difference, but if this bugs you then you're probably loath to play audio from your computer in the first place.
CD Quality: A good rule of thumb is that, if you've spent more money on your stereo than on your computer, then you should probably pop for the expensive sound card and a really huge hard drive array on which to store your music in a lossless format before considering it a piece of stereo equipment.
Another important thing to remember is that just because the sound is different doesn't mean that it's of poorer quality. Just because onboard audio distorts something differently doesn't necessarily mean that it distorts it more or less.
But the spec should not come out until a product is done, says Steve Crawford
Hasn't PKWare ever heard of a preliminary spec? Although they are correct that a final specification shouldn't be published until they have created an implimentation to demonstrate its viability, they could take examples from the rest of the world and let WinZip know what they're thinking.
Hack off a decimal place
on
Making Change
·
· Score: 1
For the longest time, I have advocated just whacking the last decimal place off and getting rid of pennies, nickles, and quarters altogether. Circulate a half dollar with a face on it that nobody will collect (like Tammy Fae Baker). Let's face it, the penny is an outmoded unit.
Heck, I've darn near already built this (yes, out of a lazyboy), although this version lacks a few key features.
1. An ajustable chair. Being the long-torso'd type, standard chairs require me to either slouch (goodbye lumbar), or stare at the ceiling when I rest my head. The all-one-piece thing just doesn't work for me.
2. A split keyboard. I'm not talking about the type of keyboard where the spacebar is curved like a smileyface, either, I'm talking a truly split keyboard. Half of each attached to each armrest, so I don't have to hold my arms out in front of me to type. (try typing with thumbtacks under your palms for an hour or so, and you'll see what I mean).
3. A monitor holder that allows me to dynamically adjust the location of the monitor. I've designed two ways to do this, why can't they even come up with one?
4. A place for a telephone. You expect me to get up from such a comfy spot every time the phone rings? Get serious.
5. An eject button. Even my lazyboy has a lever on the side, so I don't have to ooze my way down to the foot of it when I want to grab a reference manual. In the world of ergonomics, comfortable and easy-to-get-out-of tend to be opposing concepts.
Well, at the risk of seeming like some kind of armchair philosophizer... it's interesting how, in Java, things like EJBs are trying to scale up what constitutes "reusable constructs".
What you're refering to is the "language level". There is a natural tendancy for any language to crawl higher - C attempts to become Perl, and Basic becomes VB. As we build larger pieces from smaller pieces, we crawl up the language level gradient.
When learning how to program in a language, we used different aptitudes based on language level. Low level languages have a very small vocabulary, but require good spacial intelligence. Higher level languages operate more linearly, but require the memorization of long lists of key words.
You can only go so far in each direction. There is a point where the high level languages exceed the abilities of the best linguists, and the low level languages tax the best of spacial thinkers. Finding a happy medium is difficult - as far as I'm concerned, C++ with STL is it, but others continue to build more interesting mousetraps. The current great contenters are C# and Python. The future remains to be seen.
I also agree that the Lego model of programming is just not happening. (12 years in the industry, here) The majority of the reusable constructs are already written - the strings and lists, for example - in the standard template library.
The problem that the software industry is facing is that, the larger a functional piece is, the less likely it is to fit a specific purpose.
As a side note, I also tend to think that the "software industry" is dead, but that a large number of industries that rely on software are alive and kicking. Very few people will be creating software for the sake of software any more - it's just not practical. By the arguements stated above, general purpose chunks of software just don't fit specific purposes.
On the other hand, the networking and gaming and finanical and manufacturing (etc, etc) industries will continue to create specific purpose software as they can justify it. This, however, is not a job for the typical "armchair programmer". If your programming habits involve months of deep philosophy about the practicality of the latest technology, then there is probably no place for you in the industry any more.
"Those examples illustrate situations in which a society fails to solve perceived problems because the maintenance of the problem is good for some people. In contrast to that so-called rational behavior, there are also failures to attempt to solve perceived problems that economists consider "irrational behavior": that is, the behavior is harmful for everybody. Such irrational behavior often arises when all of us are torn by clashes of values within each person. We may be strongly attached to a bad status quo because it is favored by some deeply held value that we admire. "
Finally, I understand why we continue the drug war...
If you include voice of IP implementations on *nix, you have several choices. For instance, Clarent does most of their implementation on Sun machines. This won't help you if you're looking for free stuff, but that is an entirely different question.
One of the things that the author of this article harps on is that the creators of web content don't use tables as the W3C intends them to. The W3C needs to ask the question "Why do they do that?" The answer is pretty simple: because it's the best tool for the job. ["best" in this context being an amalgam of "easiest to use" and "produces the intended effect"]
In order to resolve this discrepancy, the W3C should do one of two things. Either provide a tool that is "better" than Tables (remember: "better" includes "easy to use"), or create a tag parallel with Tables (perhaps "Layout") that is identical to Table, but gives the rendering engine a better idea as to what the designer's intent was.
This is definitely something that the community would have to get used to, but it is also something that the community could use. In time, theoretically the Table and Layout tags could evolve to better suit their purpose.
Yea, it's about as good as the original story. It's even more insightful about the ability of advertisement to mislead, because it has the Venusians (who have outlawed any form of hype or advertising) to compare with.
I believe that the Space Merchants was the sequel to The Merchant's War. That's the one where the advertising executive gets addicted to Moke cola and winds up stopping the fleet of ships attempting to addict Venus to various products. He spends a bit of time in a rehab camp, but it's the previous book where they first send people to Venus.
Slashdot Mirror
When deciding if you're going to bother with 802.11b or g, you need to ask yourself what you're going to use it for. It is unlikely that your inbound pipeline will be more than 12mbps, and it's also unlikely that the users will want to spend a lot of time swapping files. Intranet gaming also takes much less bandwidth than this for the ten or so machines that the typical router will support. With that in mind, 802.11b should be more than adequate.
A warning, though. Don't go into this assuming that it'll be maintenance free. I run one of these for the local neighbors, and they're regularly calling me up to find out what's wrong with the connection. Run it for a month or so without charging people. This will both hook your customers on the idea of having it available, and give you the time to figure out the best location of your router, how much regular maintenance your system will take, and if it's worth your effort.
This may seem naive, but what prevents us from including a magnetic core in our interplanetary space craft? The weight for that kind fo thing has to be a lot less than the weight of sheilding.
Someone please rate this guy's moderation as unfair. If the original poster can take pot shots at people's political views, it shouldn't be offtopic to point out the factual falicies in the post.
Just in case anyone is curious, I'm in Denver, it's 8:22pm, and we can't see anything. Either the thing isn't on yet, it's too misty here to see it at this distance, or it's not a visible light laser. Bummer, I was looking forward to the lights show.
It does seem that the process for creating patents is largely incapable of determining the validity of patents. It works more like a sanity check, and barely that.
Considering this, it would make more sense if it were cheaper for external entities to challenge patents after they were created. As things stand, it takes thousands, or sometimes tens of thousands of dollars to challenge even the most obviously flawed patent.
We could, for instance, create a standard reveiw process where an individual presents evidence of patent conflict or prior art. Since the claimant is doing much of the research in advance, the cost should be considerably less.
Oddly enough, real life is starting to resemble the Usenet. A few tidbits of useful information floating in a sea of refuse. This is why effective information mining tools are necessary. I quake with fear at the thought of Microsoft taking over Google.
This guy gets the silly idea that seagoing pirates were not bad guys by doing something called "research".
I think that we differ in the definition of the term "bad guy". Just because a person is sanctioned by some government to murder and steal doesn't mean that they are the good guys. Government sanctioned thugs are still thugs.
Admittedly, both pirates and american revolutionaries were people who wanted to live under their own law. This alone isn't enough of a differentiation until you identify whether "their law" involves killing and pillaging as a way of life.
The guy's whole point is that....They were somewhere in the middle, living brutal lives, but they were also trying to escape the oppressive British (or French or Dutch) rule, and were caught up in the politics of their time.
The only real difference between a hero and a villain is how they react to injustice. Heros try to fix it, villains create more.
Actually, the author's point was that Captain Kidd was someone caught up in political scheming, not that all pirates were that way. Most pirates are really just seagoing highwaymen.
Why is it that this guy thinks that the seagoing pirates were good guys? Certainly we've romanticized that kind of pirate, but this is a form of social blindness purposefully done in the name of entertainment.
The original pirates were just guys who lived outside the law by stealing whatever they could from those who went outside law's reach. We've romanticized them because of their freedom.
In a few specific cases, those who we call pirates were actually acting in protest of (or in the pay of) one government or another. Today we have Terrorists vs. Freedom Fighters, but back then they had Pirates vs. Privateers. No real difference if you're on the wrong end of things.
I've been typing Dvorak for about ten years now, but I've found it virtually impossible to use just dvorak. Too many other people wind up using my machine. For the fun of it, I refer to my keyboard as being "encrypted" when it's in the dvorak mapping.
Reason I switched: Because it would be cool. However, I agree that it bothers my wrists a whole lot less, although I don't really notice a typing speed difference. I haven't actually tested in a while, but last I checked my qwerty speed was over 100. After a while, it just doesn't matter.
I've been asked to sign that kind of agreement about three times in my career, and every time I have declined on the grounds that it would give them rights to my web site, any code that I wrote to update Opensource projects, and even personal emails that I write to my family while at home.
In no case I have ever seen was a person actually fired for not signing one of these. On the other hand, I've never been in a situation where I had to sign one of those to get hired in the first place. Are there any actual experiences out there in that direction?
Actually, most of the original Matrix movie was stolen from a book called The Wonderland Gambit, Book One: The Cybernetic Walrus written by Jack L Chalker (more famous for his Well of Souls series). The first twenty minutes or so was essentially identical to the first two chapters of his book. This was so much true that I looked for his name in the credits the first time I watched the movie. He also wrote a book entitled The Identity Matrix, which was a bit of a different concept, so apparently the authors of the Matrix mixed and matched from Chalker's ideas.
Last I heard, Chalker was planning on suing the writers for theft of his ideas, but I have no idea where that went.
Mythological Beast
"Our world has become a perpetual learning curve" That's a great line. If its yours, you should write
Off the top of my head, actually. I gave up a promising career writing Sci-Fi in order to become a better software engineer.
I'm going to print it out and put it up on my office wall.
If you do this, could you be kind enough to credit me on the poster? Thanks.
Robert Rapplean,
The Mythological Beast
Another equally plausible explaination is future shock. As a software engineer who is perpetually needing to cram new technologies into my brain just to tread water, I tend to feel that I get enough of technology in the real world. Even the most technically disinclined are being forced to interact with machines on a daily basis.
Our world has become a perpetual learning curve. If I want escapism, I turn to magic, which defies comprehension and, therefore, requires no thought.
Mythological Beast
Ok, let's get back to basics. When determining what the resultant sound quality is like, you have to consider three things:
1. The quality of the recording
2. The quality of the playback system
3. The environment in which you listen to it.
The third one is something that most people just plain forget. If your environment drowns out all the detail, then there is no point in having a high quality playback system or recording.
Here are a few guidelines for MP3 compression:
96kb/s: At this level, you will notice the drop in all environments except the worst. This quality is only good if you are planning to listen to the music in the car, on a crowded street, or play it as light background music (or if you have a tin ear).
128kb/s: This level of compression is generally indistiguishable from CD quality when played through a typical PA system, or at loud parties. The room acoustics will generally distort the sound more than the compression will.
196kb/s: This compression rate is about the maximum sound quality that matters for standard PC speakers in a room full of white noise generators. High quality PA systems in an acoustically arranged room also fall here.
256 or 320kb/s: You would need a good stereo in a quiet room to tell this from CD audio. Yes, there is a difference, but if this bugs you then you're probably loath to play audio from your computer in the first place.
CD Quality: A good rule of thumb is that, if you've spent more money on your stereo than on your computer, then you should probably pop for the expensive sound card and a really huge hard drive array on which to store your music in a lossless format before considering it a piece of stereo equipment.
Another important thing to remember is that just because the sound is different doesn't mean that it's of poorer quality. Just because onboard audio distorts something differently doesn't necessarily mean that it distorts it more or less.
1. Download it. Here's a link:
http://www.xchat.org/
2. Install it
3. Go here for further instructions:
http://www.irchelp.org/
4. Don't blame us.
-MB
But the spec should not come out until a product is done, says Steve Crawford
Hasn't PKWare ever heard of a preliminary spec? Although they are correct that a final specification shouldn't be published until they have created an implimentation to demonstrate its viability, they could take examples from the rest of the world and let WinZip know what they're thinking.
For the longest time, I have advocated just whacking the last decimal place off and getting rid of pennies, nickles, and quarters altogether. Circulate a half dollar with a face on it that nobody will collect (like Tammy Fae Baker). Let's face it, the penny is an outmoded unit.
Mythological Beast
Heck, I've darn near already built this (yes, out of a lazyboy), although this version lacks a few key features.
1. An ajustable chair. Being the long-torso'd type, standard chairs require me to either slouch (goodbye lumbar), or stare at the ceiling when I rest my head. The all-one-piece thing just doesn't work for me.
2. A split keyboard. I'm not talking about the type of keyboard where the spacebar is curved like a smileyface, either, I'm talking a truly split keyboard. Half of each attached to each armrest, so I don't have to hold my arms out in front of me to type. (try typing with thumbtacks under your palms for an hour or so, and you'll see what I mean).
3. A monitor holder that allows me to dynamically adjust the location of the monitor. I've designed two ways to do this, why can't they even come up with one?
4. A place for a telephone. You expect me to get up from such a comfy spot every time the phone rings? Get serious.
5. An eject button. Even my lazyboy has a lever on the side, so I don't have to ooze my way down to the foot of it when I want to grab a reference manual. In the world of ergonomics, comfortable and easy-to-get-out-of tend to be opposing concepts.
Well, at the risk of seeming like some kind of armchair philosophizer... it's interesting how, in Java, things like EJBs are trying to scale up what constitutes "reusable constructs".
What you're refering to is the "language level". There is a natural tendancy for any language to crawl higher - C attempts to become Perl, and Basic becomes VB. As we build larger pieces from smaller pieces, we crawl up the language level gradient.
When learning how to program in a language, we used different aptitudes based on language level. Low level languages have a very small vocabulary, but require good spacial intelligence. Higher level languages operate more linearly, but require the memorization of long lists of key words.
You can only go so far in each direction. There is a point where the high level languages exceed the abilities of the best linguists, and the low level languages tax the best of spacial thinkers. Finding a happy medium is difficult - as far as I'm concerned, C++ with STL is it, but others continue to build more interesting mousetraps. The current great contenters are C# and Python. The future remains to be seen.
I also agree that the Lego model of programming is just not happening. (12 years in the industry, here) The majority of the reusable constructs are already written - the strings and lists, for example - in the standard template library.
The problem that the software industry is facing is that, the larger a functional piece is, the less likely it is to fit a specific purpose.
As a side note, I also tend to think that the "software industry" is dead, but that a large number of industries that rely on software are alive and kicking. Very few people will be creating software for the sake of software any more - it's just not practical. By the arguements stated above, general purpose chunks of software just don't fit specific purposes.
On the other hand, the networking and gaming and finanical and manufacturing (etc, etc) industries will continue to create specific purpose software as they can justify it. This, however, is not a job for the typical "armchair programmer". If your programming habits involve months of deep philosophy about the practicality of the latest technology, then there is probably no place for you in the industry any more.
Mythological Beast
"Those examples illustrate situations in which a society fails to solve perceived problems because the maintenance of the problem is good for some people. In contrast to that so-called rational behavior, there are also failures to attempt to solve perceived problems that economists consider "irrational behavior": that is, the behavior is harmful for everybody. Such irrational behavior often arises when all of us are torn by clashes of values within each person. We may be strongly attached to a bad status quo because it is favored by some deeply held value that we admire. "
Finally, I understand why we continue the drug war...
If you include voice of IP implementations on *nix, you have several choices. For instance, Clarent does most of their implementation on Sun machines. This won't help you if you're looking for free stuff, but that is an entirely different question.
Mythological Beast
One of the things that the author of this article harps on is that the creators of web content don't use tables as the W3C intends them to. The W3C needs to ask the question "Why do they do that?" The answer is pretty simple: because it's the best tool for the job. ["best" in this context being an amalgam of "easiest to use" and "produces the intended effect"]
In order to resolve this discrepancy, the W3C should do one of two things. Either provide a tool that is "better" than Tables (remember: "better" includes "easy to use"), or create a tag parallel with Tables (perhaps "Layout") that is identical to Table, but gives the rendering engine a better idea as to what the designer's intent was.
This is definitely something that the community would have to get used to, but it is also something that the community could use. In time, theoretically the Table and Layout tags could evolve to better suit their purpose.
Mythological Beast
> Haven't read it myself: any good?
Yea, it's about as good as the original story. It's even more insightful about the ability of advertisement to mislead, because it has the Venusians (who have outlawed any form of hype or advertising) to compare with.
Mythological Beast
I believe that the Space Merchants was the sequel to The Merchant's War. That's the one where the advertising executive gets addicted to Moke cola and winds up stopping the fleet of ships attempting to addict Venus to various products. He spends a bit of time in a rehab camp, but it's the previous book where they first send people to Venus.
Mythological Beast