Am I the only one who liked Voyager? It was my second favourite series after TNG. It was enjoyable escapist entertainment that amused me enormously.
I seem to be some sort of freakish minority that hated all of DS9 from start to finish, and loved Voyager from start to finish. Often I get funny looks when I say that. Bah, what do I care. I enjoyed the series, and no matter what anybody else thinks, I still enjoy it. And I'm going to keep on enjoying it. Not like I should care if other people didn't like it. When the new movie comes out, I'll evaluate that on my own terms and either like or dislike it by myself without anybody else telling me that I shouldn't like it because it was "bad".
Microwaves are considered radio waves, and are about a thousand times lower frequency than visible light. As an example, Ku-band satellites (used for satellite TV and internet) operate in the 12 to 18 GHz ranges. The lowest frequency form of light, far-infrared light, starts at 300 GHz. By no stretch of the imagination do these satellites operate using any form of light. The frequencies are way too low to be considered such. That's why the hell not.
Why the hell not? Because microwaves are classified as radio waves. They occupy roughly 3GHz up until 300GHz. At the 300GHz point, THAT is where light starts, with FIR (Far Infrared light). Visible light is up at roughly 380 through 750 terahertz, or over a thousand times higher than where microwaves end.
Consumer microwave equipment such as cooking microwaves and WiFi, is actually a decent bit into UHF territory (but the boundries of what is considered a microwave are a bit fluid), so 2.4GHz is apparently close enough to still be considered a microwave.
Any how, to reiterate, microwaves are RADIO waves, not light waves. That's why the hell not.
Ah yes, you raise a good point. Although I already multiplied by two for the round trip for one direction, so the total "ping" latency to the first hop would theoretically be 478ms. And then there's the fact that microwaves in atmosphere and through clouds probably don't travel quite as fast as light in a vacuum.
And that's just the minimum latency to talk to the first hop!
which sells for about $80 US. It features a "gaming" mode which supposedly reduces latency (probably uses shorter buffers or something). If you could find one, I guess there'd be no reason not to stick it in your gaming PC itself (unless you're using a laptop). (Proper) external hardware modems from US Robotics sell for about $100 and up, although that low-end $100 modem is missing some features that might help for gaming that the $70 internal and more expensive external modems have.
Consider that the absolute minimum latency that satellite COULD provide is quite high. Let's do some math:
Geosynchronous satellites reside at roughly 35,786 kilometers altitude. Multiply by two for the round trip, or 71,572 KM. The speed of light is 299,792 kilometers per second. Therefore, it would take light itself (in a vacuum) 239 milliseconds JUST to travel the distance. And of course, satellites don't use light for communication, and the signal isn't going through a vacuum, so the actual numbers are much worse. I've heard anecdotal reports that latency for satellite internet is at least 500 to 1000 milliseconds.
Bottom line? Get both satellite, and dialup. A good dialup connection can provide latencies as low as 150ms (or sometimes lower) to game servers, which is really quite good. Try to stick to games such as Half-Life (1 or 2) based games, or more recent Quake 3 engine games, that use latency correction; this will eliminate the effect of latency for the most part. Also be sure to tweak your connection settings; you'd be surprised how much optimized settings can do for sub-par connections.
Of course, you'll be limited to servers that are extremely close to you internet-wise, but this is the price you pay for living in a non-broadband served area. One important piece of advice I can give is that, above all else, GET A HARDWARE MODEM. WinModems (which make up virtually all 56K modems sold today, or built into motherboards) significantly increase latency, sometimes by 50 to 100 milliseconds. Your best bet is to buy either an decent external 56k modem (Not that cheap, probably best to get one that has a serial connection), or an internal modem that uses the ISA interface.
I know for a fact that reasonably modern motherboards can be found with ISA slots. You can find ISA slots in motherboards for processors as recent as the Athlon XP. You may want to build a cheap router out of a box with an ISA slot, in order to minimize latency without having to use a slow computer for gaming. The Abit KT7a (which used the Via KT133a chipset) has an ISA slot, it's what I've got in the desktop I'm currently typing on. I've had broadband for years, but still have an ISA 56k modem plugged into the computer.
Other people have suggested other broadband alternatives; ISDN, for example. You may want to look into those types of things, though they may be expensive. Just know that properly configured, with a good ISP, dialup internet CAN be perfectly acceptable for gaming.
Many BitTorrent clients support reporting a different IP to the tracker than the one actually held by the computer. This is useful for routing INCOMING connections through a third party.
Essentially what you need to do is have students connect to a server with a public IP via SSH, and set their BitTorrent client to report that server's IP to the tracker. The idea is that you set up an SSH tunnel that accepts connections on the remote end and forwards it over SSH. Most SSHv2 clients (such as PuTTY) support this functionality.
Assign each user a specific port on the server (There are over 65 thousand ports, and each person needs just one), and provide them with a nice little automated solution to set up the tunnel. PuTTY has a command-line version called "plink" that makes this super easy. Just write a short VisualBasic application that does nothing but show a window with a button to start up and connect plink to the server, and shut down the process when the user is done. This way, all a user has to do if he wants to use bittorrent is run the application and click a button. Or better yet, just write a short batch script that the user can launch when they want to do torrent-related stuff.
This is only one of the possible methods. As you can see, a computer doesn't need a public IP address in order to accept incoming connections via BitTorrent, since you can tunnel them. It should be noted that many BitTorrent clients also support proxies. uTorrent even supports proxies for peer-to-peer connections. And you may also want to look into P2P caching solutions, which could potentially significantly reduce the impact of BitTorrent on your university's connection.
There is one benefit of growing. The larger you get, the lower infrastructure costs get per-user. The more bandwidth you order from a single provider, the better per-megabit costs they'll give you (You can bet they'll give somebody leasing a 10 GigE connection a way better deal than someone leasing a 100mbit FastE connection). The same applies to hardware, the larger your data storage requirements, the cheaper it gets. You can start taking advantage of things like Sun's 48-drive fileserver.
Yes, the "rule" applies less to hardware than bandwidth, but in general, the more money you've got to work with, the more you get for each dollar.
I'll ignore the discussion on HL2 for a minute and mention that when HL1 did this, it was revolutionary. A huge improvement over games that came before it, such as Quake 1, that didn't feature any scripted events at all. Back then, it was real innovation.
I don't recall it being a "partnership". As I recall, Nintendo was working on a CD add on to the SNES (I think it was to be called Playstation)-- all the old Nintendo systems have expansion ports on them.
No, Nintendo approached Sony to have Sony work on a CD add-on to the SNES. Sony promoted the add-on as the "Play Station". That's what I'd call a partnership. Nintendo was interested in the work Sony had done with Philips on the CDROM/XA spec.
They struck a deal with Sony to build the hardware, however part-way through the deal it became apparent that Sony wanted to use pieces of the hardware elsewhere (which seems reasonable to me-- they'd be the manufacterer of the parts after all) but Nintendo wanted to assume rights to all the hardware inside.
No, Nintendo got upset when they realized that their earlier contract with Sony gave Sony complete control over all games for the CD-ROM attachment.
Sony would not agree to hand over rights to the hardware so Nintendo broke it off and struck a deal with Panasonic. (Actually, I think Nintendo started discussions with Panasonic before they broke off with Sony.) Anyway, similiar things happened with Panasonic, and shortly after Nintendo seemed to be declaring that cartridges were the obvious way to go and worked on special chipsets such as the FX set they used in Star Fox (which is probably why the N64 was cartridged based to).
No, Panasonic never had anything to do with it. Panasonic made the 3DO, but that had nothing to do with Nintendo. Nintendo's deal was with Philips, and resulted in the CD-i. There is no such thing as the "3D-i".
Sony was left with a prototype Playstation add-on to SNES. They reworked it into a hybrid that played SNES carts and CD's. Then they reworked it again into the CD only version they sold. A producer friend of mine who worked at Sony during that time told me that they (he and the people he worked with) were downright shocked when upper management told them that they were going to turn the hardware into a proper console and enter the market.
Sort of. The concept was reworked, but the eventual hardware bore little resemblance to the original. The original concept was essentially a SNES with more storage space. By the time they got around to developing what would be the eventual PlayStation, the original hardware wasn't powerful enough.
Panasonic fallout with Nintendo led to the Panasonic 3D-i and some horrid Zelda games. (Panasonic had gained rights to use some Nintendo characters for some games, but THEY made those games [no Miyamoto here] and the lack of quality shows.)
No. Again, Panasonic made the 3DO. The horrible Zelda games (and other Nintendo properties) were for the Philips CD-i.
I don't remember the news links off-hand, but if you're interested in the details, do a search. There are many great articles on the subject out there.
And you should read some of them, you've got quite a bit wrong:P
It should be noted that the PlayStation was originally supposed to be a Nintendo/Sony partnership. The device was to essentially be a hybrid device that supported both SNES and CD-based media. It was only because Nintendo literally backstabbed Sony that Sony started down the path to creating what eventually became the shipping PlayStation.
Just think, if not for Nintendo's arrogance, Sony wouldn't be the market leader that they are now (instead, they'd be part of the partnership that was the market leader), and Nintendo would be the other side of that partnership. Things could so easily have gone so differently.
These CFLs don't work in the majority of lamps in my house, which mostly have the type of lampshade that clamps on to the glass part of the lightbulb with two u-shaped metal prongs. So, savings don't mean much if I can't use them.
Capricorn's unit (750GB drives): 3TB per 1U Sun Fire X4500 (500GB drives): 24TB per 4U
Capricorn TB per 42u rack: 126TB Sun Fire X4500 TB per 42u rack: 240TB
Capricorn watts per rack (80w/unit): 3360w Sun Fire X4500 watts per rack (1500w/unit): 15000w
Capricorn watts per PB: 26667W Sun Fire X4500 watts per PB: 62500W
Capricorn cost per rack: ~ $200,000 Sun Fire X4500 cost per rack: $470,995
Capricorn cost per PB: ~ $ 1,560,000 Sun Fire X4500 cost per PB: ~ $1,960,000
So yes, Capricorn's solution provides lower power usage, but also lower density (And less processing power and redundancy I'd imagine). So it's a tradeoff. Lower the power bills, but raise the rent bill and the risk.
It should be noted that for Sun's server, I'm using the 1500W rating of each of the redundant power supplies, the typical usage would actually be much less (just like how a PC with a 500w PSU might only use 300W under load). This also ignores processor power, as each Sun unit is a quad opteron. It also ignores RAID, as the Capricorn could do no more than 3 drive RAID5, while each Sun box could have a 48 drive RAIDZ or RAIDZ2, wasting a lot less for parity. And things might change if Sun put 750GB drives in their unit instead of 500GB drives. It's all about tradeoffs.
So they used a geolocation database and displayed a "Sorry, no article for you" message to people in the UK. What's the big deal? An enormous amount of sites do this already. One could write a PHP or Perl script to do the same thing using a simple database in about sixty seconds.
How is this even REMOTELY newsworthy?
"BREAKING NEWS: New York Times discovers geolocation, claims the well known technology will revolutionize the media!"
Copyright infringement isn't theft. It's copyright infringement. Two different things. Neither is right, but they're different.
It's also not a crime in the current context. Let me quote US law: Infringement is a crime only where it is done "willfully and for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain."
I would think most of the people sharing copyrighted files on the internet are probably not in it for the profit. So, let's throw right and wrong out the window and concentrate on getting our definitions straight first.
The US is not the entire world. A lot of us have faster net connections than 2 or 3 megabits per second. My DSL, for example, is 5mbit, which is higher than the real-world throughput 802.11 gets you. My ISP also offers ADSL2+ services up to 16 mbit speeds. Now, in my experience, the real-world performance of 802.11g is 20mbit at close range, and 10mbit in another room. 10mbit isn't fast enough for my ISP's fastest tier of DSL service. On top of that, 10mbit makes sending large files over a network rather slow.
For this reason, 802.11n is quite attractive. While my current tier of internet service (5mbit) is fine with 802.11g, my ISP upgrades connections rather quickly. I've gone from 960kbit, to 1.2mbit, to 3mbit, to 5 mbit, all for the same price. In 2008, by the time 802.11n is out, I'll likely have outgrown 802.11g.
Also, why would you say WiMax-like services are dead? My ISP already offers 3mbit wireless internet over a technology in the same vein as WiMax.
Can't you also do that by creating an ISO of a commercial DVD, sending that over the internet, and re-burning it to a dual-layer disc on the other end? I thought CSS was just an encryption standard, I didn't think it could tell that the disc had changed.
It's not like E3 is leaving a big gap. There are alternate events such as the Penny Arcade Expo, which with the demise of E3, is now the largest gaming related event in North America. Many of the big companies like Nintendo and Microsoft take part, with playable demos of unreleased products, and there's certainly room for the little guys.
It was their mistake, but if it was, why should I continue getting a service that I wasn't qualified for?
Perhaps understanding was too forgiving a word. After all, they had put my balance back, and it was a simple mistake I rectified. But as I said, the rub was that they lied to my face, and kept on lying, telling me that I'd been paying 40 cents per minute the whole time, when I clearly hadn't been. I kicked Telus to the curb and have been happy ever since. I currently pay Rogers $20 per month (still pay as you go), and get 12 to 20 cents per minute depending on my usage. That's better than Telus's best rate at $50 per month. So I'm happy, for now. What more can I do? Telus lost a customer, can the penalty be any greater than that?
The thing is, BitTorrent doesn't do streaming. It handles static files. This system seems to be what I've been waiting for: BitTorrent for streams.
First of all, let me say, I hope this is open. More often than not, I've wished that I had the bandwidth to push out a video stream. Sort of a "make your own TV station" type of thing. I've got a dedicated box with hefty bandwidth, and audio streaming is no problem, but when you start talking about 256 or 500 kbit video, you can't go very far. And so, I hope that they allow anybody to inject content into this new system, not just those that pay the big bucks (TV networks). Although, my overall desire is simply to be able to watch SciFi (the channel), since it's not available in Canada;)
Also, I hope that I'm interpreting this right. What I want is an application that does for network streams what BitTorrent does for static files. One user (a "seed") would send slices of the stream to various different users. Those users would then download slices from other users, recombining them into the stream. Each user would then use their available upstream to further distribute their slices (Which would expire as they became old).
There are a few bottlenecks, of course. The first is the uploader's bandwidth. If you have 640kbit of upstream, you probably won't be able to upload even 512kbit of video. Slices are going to get "lost" (Sent to a user that doesn't share it or doesn't share it fast enough), so you're going to need some replication. This could be reduced by having the seed intelligently decide who to send to, picking the fastest users that share the most to receive the initial slices. Another bottleneck is maximum swarm upstream capcity. The average video bitrate can only be something less than the average upstream capacity. This is why general streams won't work, as the P2P software itself needs to be able to bitrate scrape (or is the term bitrate shaving?) the stream to adapt to network conditions. The plan is to have a rather lengthy buffer on the seed (and a bit longer of a buffer on clients since older pieces that people are about to play are the most valuable), so you can't adapt to swarm speeds by simply lowering the encoding bitrate. You need to be able to take the already-encoded video and shave the bitrate down until an actual bitrate change can reach the end of the buffer. I know that this has been done with MPEG-2 in DVD-to-DVDR transcoders, and I assume that somebody can figure it out with a more modern codec.
So, that's essentially what I want. The seed (provider of the stream) simply uploads as much as he can, and the software figures out what kind of bitrates the swarm can support (to ensure that nobody has to buffer constantly, which doesn't work well on live feeds, sine buffering means you're going to lose data), and handles buffering in various places. I know there are P2P audio streaming programs out there already (PeerCast is one, I think), but I don't recall PeerCast doing bitrate shaving, and it was a bitch to get working. The beauty of BitTorrent was how simple it was to set up. At most, you just routed a port, and even that was optional. People click a link, the file downloads, everybody is happy. PeerCast failed in that simplicity. That's why I want something as simple for streams; somebody clicks a link on a web page, and it just starts streaming.
I have, unfortunately. I live in Quebec, and used to subscribe to Telus Mobility. I had a pay-as-you-go contract, and started it out with a $50 card. This got me a per-minute rate of 25 cents.
The first month of my service, I accidentally let the balance expire. I called them up, and the representative said it was no problem. They said that since it was my first time that this had happened, they would be happy to put the balance back. I set up a $10/mth auto-billing on my credit card so that this would never happen again. Telus's policy that if you start out with a low rate (25 cents), you can keep it as long as you renew your balance.
Everything was fine for a year or two. They kept charging $10/mth, and I kept getting 25 cents per minute. Then, one day, all of a sudden, my minutes-remaining figure plummeted! I called up Telus, and they told me that everything looked fine with my account. I was paying 40 cents per minute, as I should be. "Wait a second," I said, "I'm supposed to be paying 25 cents a minute. I started out on a $50 card."
They'd have none of this. "Sorry sir, you let your balance expire, and so we put you back on the 40 cent per minute plan."
I tried to tell them that their own representative had cleared that up, and that I'd been paying 25 cents per minute for the past year. That's when they hit me with the showstopper "No, sir, I'm sorry, you've been paying 40 cents per minute for the past year." I tried to tell them that, no, this was impossible, the only reason I noticed something was wrong is because they suddenly switched me from 25 to 40 just 5 minutes ago. I noticed when the number of minutes left in my account dropped by almost half. But they stubbornly continued telling me that I had been hallucinating for the past year.
That's when I decided to jump ship. While I probably could have tolerated the issue if they'd simply said "Sorry sir, it was a mistake to let you continue at 25 cents per minute, and we've only just corrected this now. There's nothing we can do." then I would have been upset, but understanding. However, the moment they started lying to my face, and making crap up, that was the final straw.
So what happened after all of this? I switched to Rogers. Just another big company, sure, but they haven't lied to my face yet, and I'm getting a much better per-minute rate. I know that many people think Rogers is evil, but for me, it's sufficient. My phone works, I get the rate that I'm promised, and everything is right in the world.
Indeed, although the environmental impact is a one-time affair, more or less. Unlike coal/oil/gas plants that will continue to pump out pollution for their entire lifespan. As for the natives, I don't recall exactly what went on with that, but I seem to recall them agreeing in the end. If it was for the right reasons, I don't know.
More than this, the power is inconsequential compared to the other power use in a home. 2 watts? How does that compare to the air conditioning used in the summer and heating used in the winter? Or the lights outside the door of the house that get turned on at night? In the grand scheme of things, 2W is nothing.
Heck, take a TV, for example. I have no idea how much a big screen TV draws, but let's pick a number, 500W for the big sucker. Now, in my house, the television gets pretty frequent use when we're home. Not because we watch a lot of TV, but because different people have their shows they want to watch, or consoles they want to play. Let's say 4 hours a day. That's 2000 watt-hours for the TV per day
Now, how many watt-hours does the xbox draw a day? 24. Hmm, not much. Imagine how much more power you could save switching to a more energy efficient TV, or even a smaller one.
On top of that, I live in a province that gets all its power from renewable sources. Any wasted power goes to the government-owned energy company. Any profit that is made on top of the cost of maintaining existing infrastructure and building new hydro dams goes into the government coffers, where it can do some good.
More than that, not everybody gets their power from coal. The Province of Quebec, for example, where I live, gets its power entirely from hydroelectricity, with the exception of a single experimental nuclear power plant built decades ago. The government-owned power monopoly, Hydro Quebec, is the world's single largest producer of hydro. While the environmental impact of hydroelectricity is a matter of some debate, it IS a renewable energy source with negligible long-term emissions.
So, in a place like Quebec, you'd be switching from gas-burning internal combustion to centralized hydro plants. That'd go a long way to reducing pollution in Quebec.
Slashdot Mirror
Am I the only one who liked Voyager? It was my second favourite series after TNG. It was enjoyable escapist entertainment that amused me enormously.
I seem to be some sort of freakish minority that hated all of DS9 from start to finish, and loved Voyager from start to finish. Often I get funny looks when I say that. Bah, what do I care. I enjoyed the series, and no matter what anybody else thinks, I still enjoy it. And I'm going to keep on enjoying it. Not like I should care if other people didn't like it. When the new movie comes out, I'll evaluate that on my own terms and either like or dislike it by myself without anybody else telling me that I shouldn't like it because it was "bad".
Microwaves are considered radio waves, and are about a thousand times lower frequency than visible light. As an example, Ku-band satellites (used for satellite TV and internet) operate in the 12 to 18 GHz ranges. The lowest frequency form of light, far-infrared light, starts at 300 GHz. By no stretch of the imagination do these satellites operate using any form of light. The frequencies are way too low to be considered such. That's why the hell not.
Why the hell not? Because microwaves are classified as radio waves. They occupy roughly 3GHz up until 300GHz. At the 300GHz point, THAT is where light starts, with FIR (Far Infrared light). Visible light is up at roughly 380 through 750 terahertz, or over a thousand times higher than where microwaves end.
Consumer microwave equipment such as cooking microwaves and WiFi, is actually a decent bit into UHF territory (but the boundries of what is considered a microwave are a bit fluid), so 2.4GHz is apparently close enough to still be considered a microwave.
Any how, to reiterate, microwaves are RADIO waves, not light waves. That's why the hell not.
Ah yes, you raise a good point. Although I already multiplied by two for the round trip for one direction, so the total "ping" latency to the first hop would theoretically be 478ms. And then there's the fact that microwaves in atmosphere and through clouds probably don't travel quite as fast as light in a vacuum.
And that's just the minimum latency to talk to the first hop!
And I'm going to go with "microwaves are not considered a type of light". You can't call the entire electromagnetic spectrum "light".
I should note that not all PCI internal modems are WinModems. You can buy them still, such as this one from US Robotics:
? sku=USR5610B
http://www.usr.com/products/home/home-product.asp
which sells for about $80 US. It features a "gaming" mode which supposedly reduces latency (probably uses shorter buffers or something). If you could find one, I guess there'd be no reason not to stick it in your gaming PC itself (unless you're using a laptop). (Proper) external hardware modems from US Robotics sell for about $100 and up, although that low-end $100 modem is missing some features that might help for gaming that the $70 internal and more expensive external modems have.
Consider that the absolute minimum latency that satellite COULD provide is quite high. Let's do some math:
Geosynchronous satellites reside at roughly 35,786 kilometers altitude. Multiply by two for the round trip, or 71,572 KM. The speed of light is 299,792 kilometers per second. Therefore, it would take light itself (in a vacuum) 239 milliseconds JUST to travel the distance. And of course, satellites don't use light for communication, and the signal isn't going through a vacuum, so the actual numbers are much worse. I've heard anecdotal reports that latency for satellite internet is at least 500 to 1000 milliseconds.
Bottom line? Get both satellite, and dialup. A good dialup connection can provide latencies as low as 150ms (or sometimes lower) to game servers, which is really quite good. Try to stick to games such as Half-Life (1 or 2) based games, or more recent Quake 3 engine games, that use latency correction; this will eliminate the effect of latency for the most part. Also be sure to tweak your connection settings; you'd be surprised how much optimized settings can do for sub-par connections.
Of course, you'll be limited to servers that are extremely close to you internet-wise, but this is the price you pay for living in a non-broadband served area. One important piece of advice I can give is that, above all else, GET A HARDWARE MODEM. WinModems (which make up virtually all 56K modems sold today, or built into motherboards) significantly increase latency, sometimes by 50 to 100 milliseconds. Your best bet is to buy either an decent external 56k modem (Not that cheap, probably best to get one that has a serial connection), or an internal modem that uses the ISA interface.
I know for a fact that reasonably modern motherboards can be found with ISA slots. You can find ISA slots in motherboards for processors as recent as the Athlon XP. You may want to build a cheap router out of a box with an ISA slot, in order to minimize latency without having to use a slow computer for gaming. The Abit KT7a (which used the Via KT133a chipset) has an ISA slot, it's what I've got in the desktop I'm currently typing on. I've had broadband for years, but still have an ISA 56k modem plugged into the computer.
Other people have suggested other broadband alternatives; ISDN, for example. You may want to look into those types of things, though they may be expensive. Just know that properly configured, with a good ISP, dialup internet CAN be perfectly acceptable for gaming.
Many BitTorrent clients support reporting a different IP to the tracker than the one actually held by the computer. This is useful for routing INCOMING connections through a third party.
Essentially what you need to do is have students connect to a server with a public IP via SSH, and set their BitTorrent client to report that server's IP to the tracker. The idea is that you set up an SSH tunnel that accepts connections on the remote end and forwards it over SSH. Most SSHv2 clients (such as PuTTY) support this functionality.
Assign each user a specific port on the server (There are over 65 thousand ports, and each person needs just one), and provide them with a nice little automated solution to set up the tunnel. PuTTY has a command-line version called "plink" that makes this super easy. Just write a short VisualBasic application that does nothing but show a window with a button to start up and connect plink to the server, and shut down the process when the user is done. This way, all a user has to do if he wants to use bittorrent is run the application and click a button. Or better yet, just write a short batch script that the user can launch when they want to do torrent-related stuff.
This is only one of the possible methods. As you can see, a computer doesn't need a public IP address in order to accept incoming connections via BitTorrent, since you can tunnel them. It should be noted that many BitTorrent clients also support proxies. uTorrent even supports proxies for peer-to-peer connections. And you may also want to look into P2P caching solutions, which could potentially significantly reduce the impact of BitTorrent on your university's connection.
There is one benefit of growing. The larger you get, the lower infrastructure costs get per-user. The more bandwidth you order from a single provider, the better per-megabit costs they'll give you (You can bet they'll give somebody leasing a 10 GigE connection a way better deal than someone leasing a 100mbit FastE connection). The same applies to hardware, the larger your data storage requirements, the cheaper it gets. You can start taking advantage of things like Sun's 48-drive fileserver.
Yes, the "rule" applies less to hardware than bandwidth, but in general, the more money you've got to work with, the more you get for each dollar.
I'll ignore the discussion on HL2 for a minute and mention that when HL1 did this, it was revolutionary. A huge improvement over games that came before it, such as Quake 1, that didn't feature any scripted events at all. Back then, it was real innovation.
I don't recall it being a "partnership". As I recall, Nintendo was working on a CD add on to the SNES (I think it was to be called Playstation)-- all the old Nintendo systems have expansion ports on them.
:P
No, Nintendo approached Sony to have Sony work on a CD add-on to the SNES. Sony promoted the add-on as the "Play Station". That's what I'd call a partnership. Nintendo was interested in the work Sony had done with Philips on the CDROM/XA spec.
They struck a deal with Sony to build the hardware, however part-way through the deal it became apparent that Sony wanted to use pieces of the hardware elsewhere (which seems reasonable to me-- they'd be the manufacterer of the parts after all) but Nintendo wanted to assume rights to all the hardware inside.
No, Nintendo got upset when they realized that their earlier contract with Sony gave Sony complete control over all games for the CD-ROM attachment.
Sony would not agree to hand over rights to the hardware so Nintendo broke it off and struck a deal with Panasonic. (Actually, I think Nintendo started discussions with Panasonic before they broke off with Sony.) Anyway, similiar things happened with Panasonic, and shortly after Nintendo seemed to be declaring that cartridges were the obvious way to go and worked on special chipsets such as the FX set they used in Star Fox (which is probably why the N64 was cartridged based to).
No, Panasonic never had anything to do with it. Panasonic made the 3DO, but that had nothing to do with Nintendo. Nintendo's deal was with Philips, and resulted in the CD-i. There is no such thing as the "3D-i".
Sony was left with a prototype Playstation add-on to SNES. They reworked it into a hybrid that played SNES carts and CD's. Then they reworked it again into the CD only version they sold. A producer friend of mine who worked at Sony during that time told me that they (he and the people he worked with) were downright shocked when upper management told them that they were going to turn the hardware into a proper console and enter the market.
Sort of. The concept was reworked, but the eventual hardware bore little resemblance to the original. The original concept was essentially a SNES with more storage space. By the time they got around to developing what would be the eventual PlayStation, the original hardware wasn't powerful enough.
Panasonic fallout with Nintendo led to the Panasonic 3D-i and some horrid Zelda games. (Panasonic had gained rights to use some Nintendo characters for some games, but THEY made those games [no Miyamoto here] and the lack of quality shows.)
No. Again, Panasonic made the 3DO. The horrible Zelda games (and other Nintendo properties) were for the Philips CD-i.
I don't remember the news links off-hand, but if you're interested in the details, do a search. There are many great articles on the subject out there.
And you should read some of them, you've got quite a bit wrong
It should be noted that the PlayStation was originally supposed to be a Nintendo/Sony partnership. The device was to essentially be a hybrid device that supported both SNES and CD-based media. It was only because Nintendo literally backstabbed Sony that Sony started down the path to creating what eventually became the shipping PlayStation.
Just think, if not for Nintendo's arrogance, Sony wouldn't be the market leader that they are now (instead, they'd be part of the partnership that was the market leader), and Nintendo would be the other side of that partnership. Things could so easily have gone so differently.
These CFLs don't work in the majority of lamps in my house, which mostly have the type of lampshade that clamps on to the glass part of the lightbulb with two u-shaped metal prongs. So, savings don't mean much if I can't use them.
Capricorn's unit (750GB drives): 3TB per 1U
Sun Fire X4500 (500GB drives): 24TB per 4U
Capricorn TB per 42u rack: 126TB
Sun Fire X4500 TB per 42u rack: 240TB
Capricorn watts per rack (80w/unit): 3360w
Sun Fire X4500 watts per rack (1500w/unit): 15000w
Capricorn watts per PB: 26667W
Sun Fire X4500 watts per PB: 62500W
Capricorn cost per rack: ~ $200,000
Sun Fire X4500 cost per rack: $470,995
Capricorn cost per PB: ~ $ 1,560,000
Sun Fire X4500 cost per PB: ~ $1,960,000
So yes, Capricorn's solution provides lower power usage, but also lower density (And less processing power and redundancy I'd imagine). So it's a tradeoff. Lower the power bills, but raise the rent bill and the risk.
It should be noted that for Sun's server, I'm using the 1500W rating of each of the redundant power supplies, the typical usage would actually be much less (just like how a PC with a 500w PSU might only use 300W under load). This also ignores processor power, as each Sun unit is a quad opteron. It also ignores RAID, as the Capricorn could do no more than 3 drive RAID5, while each Sun box could have a 48 drive RAIDZ or RAIDZ2, wasting a lot less for parity. And things might change if Sun put 750GB drives in their unit instead of 500GB drives. It's all about tradeoffs.
So they used a geolocation database and displayed a "Sorry, no article for you" message to people in the UK. What's the big deal? An enormous amount of sites do this already. One could write a PHP or Perl script to do the same thing using a simple database in about sixty seconds.
How is this even REMOTELY newsworthy?
"BREAKING NEWS: New York Times discovers geolocation, claims the well known technology will revolutionize the media!"
Copyright infringement isn't theft. It's copyright infringement. Two different things. Neither is right, but they're different.
It's also not a crime in the current context. Let me quote US law: Infringement is a crime only where it is done "willfully and for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain."
I would think most of the people sharing copyrighted files on the internet are probably not in it for the profit. So, let's throw right and wrong out the window and concentrate on getting our definitions straight first.
The US is not the entire world. A lot of us have faster net connections than 2 or 3 megabits per second. My DSL, for example, is 5mbit, which is higher than the real-world throughput 802.11 gets you. My ISP also offers ADSL2+ services up to 16 mbit speeds. Now, in my experience, the real-world performance of 802.11g is 20mbit at close range, and 10mbit in another room. 10mbit isn't fast enough for my ISP's fastest tier of DSL service. On top of that, 10mbit makes sending large files over a network rather slow.
For this reason, 802.11n is quite attractive. While my current tier of internet service (5mbit) is fine with 802.11g, my ISP upgrades connections rather quickly. I've gone from 960kbit, to 1.2mbit, to 3mbit, to 5 mbit, all for the same price. In 2008, by the time 802.11n is out, I'll likely have outgrown 802.11g.
Also, why would you say WiMax-like services are dead? My ISP already offers 3mbit wireless internet over a technology in the same vein as WiMax.
Can't you also do that by creating an ISO of a commercial DVD, sending that over the internet, and re-burning it to a dual-layer disc on the other end? I thought CSS was just an encryption standard, I didn't think it could tell that the disc had changed.
It's not like E3 is leaving a big gap. There are alternate events such as the Penny Arcade Expo, which with the demise of E3, is now the largest gaming related event in North America. Many of the big companies like Nintendo and Microsoft take part, with playable demos of unreleased products, and there's certainly room for the little guys.
It was their mistake, but if it was, why should I continue getting a service that I wasn't qualified for?
Perhaps understanding was too forgiving a word. After all, they had put my balance back, and it was a simple mistake I rectified. But as I said, the rub was that they lied to my face, and kept on lying, telling me that I'd been paying 40 cents per minute the whole time, when I clearly hadn't been. I kicked Telus to the curb and have been happy ever since. I currently pay Rogers $20 per month (still pay as you go), and get 12 to 20 cents per minute depending on my usage. That's better than Telus's best rate at $50 per month. So I'm happy, for now. What more can I do? Telus lost a customer, can the penalty be any greater than that?
The thing is, BitTorrent doesn't do streaming. It handles static files. This system seems to be what I've been waiting for: BitTorrent for streams.
;)
First of all, let me say, I hope this is open. More often than not, I've wished that I had the bandwidth to push out a video stream. Sort of a "make your own TV station" type of thing. I've got a dedicated box with hefty bandwidth, and audio streaming is no problem, but when you start talking about 256 or 500 kbit video, you can't go very far. And so, I hope that they allow anybody to inject content into this new system, not just those that pay the big bucks (TV networks). Although, my overall desire is simply to be able to watch SciFi (the channel), since it's not available in Canada
Also, I hope that I'm interpreting this right. What I want is an application that does for network streams what BitTorrent does for static files. One user (a "seed") would send slices of the stream to various different users. Those users would then download slices from other users, recombining them into the stream. Each user would then use their available upstream to further distribute their slices (Which would expire as they became old).
There are a few bottlenecks, of course. The first is the uploader's bandwidth. If you have 640kbit of upstream, you probably won't be able to upload even 512kbit of video. Slices are going to get "lost" (Sent to a user that doesn't share it or doesn't share it fast enough), so you're going to need some replication. This could be reduced by having the seed intelligently decide who to send to, picking the fastest users that share the most to receive the initial slices. Another bottleneck is maximum swarm upstream capcity. The average video bitrate can only be something less than the average upstream capacity. This is why general streams won't work, as the P2P software itself needs to be able to bitrate scrape (or is the term bitrate shaving?) the stream to adapt to network conditions. The plan is to have a rather lengthy buffer on the seed (and a bit longer of a buffer on clients since older pieces that people are about to play are the most valuable), so you can't adapt to swarm speeds by simply lowering the encoding bitrate. You need to be able to take the already-encoded video and shave the bitrate down until an actual bitrate change can reach the end of the buffer. I know that this has been done with MPEG-2 in DVD-to-DVDR transcoders, and I assume that somebody can figure it out with a more modern codec.
So, that's essentially what I want. The seed (provider of the stream) simply uploads as much as he can, and the software figures out what kind of bitrates the swarm can support (to ensure that nobody has to buffer constantly, which doesn't work well on live feeds, sine buffering means you're going to lose data), and handles buffering in various places. I know there are P2P audio streaming programs out there already (PeerCast is one, I think), but I don't recall PeerCast doing bitrate shaving, and it was a bitch to get working. The beauty of BitTorrent was how simple it was to set up. At most, you just routed a port, and even that was optional. People click a link, the file downloads, everybody is happy. PeerCast failed in that simplicity. That's why I want something as simple for streams; somebody clicks a link on a web page, and it just starts streaming.
I have, unfortunately. I live in Quebec, and used to subscribe to Telus Mobility. I had a pay-as-you-go contract, and started it out with a $50 card. This got me a per-minute rate of 25 cents.
The first month of my service, I accidentally let the balance expire. I called them up, and the representative said it was no problem. They said that since it was my first time that this had happened, they would be happy to put the balance back. I set up a $10/mth auto-billing on my credit card so that this would never happen again. Telus's policy that if you start out with a low rate (25 cents), you can keep it as long as you renew your balance.
Everything was fine for a year or two. They kept charging $10/mth, and I kept getting 25 cents per minute. Then, one day, all of a sudden, my minutes-remaining figure plummeted! I called up Telus, and they told me that everything looked fine with my account. I was paying 40 cents per minute, as I should be. "Wait a second," I said, "I'm supposed to be paying 25 cents a minute. I started out on a $50 card."
They'd have none of this. "Sorry sir, you let your balance expire, and so we put you back on the 40 cent per minute plan."
I tried to tell them that their own representative had cleared that up, and that I'd been paying 25 cents per minute for the past year. That's when they hit me with the showstopper "No, sir, I'm sorry, you've been paying 40 cents per minute for the past year." I tried to tell them that, no, this was impossible, the only reason I noticed something was wrong is because they suddenly switched me from 25 to 40 just 5 minutes ago. I noticed when the number of minutes left in my account dropped by almost half. But they stubbornly continued telling me that I had been hallucinating for the past year.
That's when I decided to jump ship. While I probably could have tolerated the issue if they'd simply said "Sorry sir, it was a mistake to let you continue at 25 cents per minute, and we've only just corrected this now. There's nothing we can do." then I would have been upset, but understanding. However, the moment they started lying to my face, and making crap up, that was the final straw.
So what happened after all of this? I switched to Rogers. Just another big company, sure, but they haven't lied to my face yet, and I'm getting a much better per-minute rate. I know that many people think Rogers is evil, but for me, it's sufficient. My phone works, I get the rate that I'm promised, and everything is right in the world.
Indeed, although the environmental impact is a one-time affair, more or less. Unlike coal/oil/gas plants that will continue to pump out pollution for their entire lifespan. As for the natives, I don't recall exactly what went on with that, but I seem to recall them agreeing in the end. If it was for the right reasons, I don't know.
More than this, the power is inconsequential compared to the other power use in a home. 2 watts? How does that compare to the air conditioning used in the summer and heating used in the winter? Or the lights outside the door of the house that get turned on at night? In the grand scheme of things, 2W is nothing.
Heck, take a TV, for example. I have no idea how much a big screen TV draws, but let's pick a number, 500W for the big sucker. Now, in my house, the television gets pretty frequent use when we're home. Not because we watch a lot of TV, but because different people have their shows they want to watch, or consoles they want to play. Let's say 4 hours a day. That's 2000 watt-hours for the TV per day
Now, how many watt-hours does the xbox draw a day? 24. Hmm, not much. Imagine how much more power you could save switching to a more energy efficient TV, or even a smaller one.
On top of that, I live in a province that gets all its power from renewable sources. Any wasted power goes to the government-owned energy company. Any profit that is made on top of the cost of maintaining existing infrastructure and building new hydro dams goes into the government coffers, where it can do some good.
More than that, not everybody gets their power from coal. The Province of Quebec, for example, where I live, gets its power entirely from hydroelectricity, with the exception of a single experimental nuclear power plant built decades ago. The government-owned power monopoly, Hydro Quebec, is the world's single largest producer of hydro. While the environmental impact of hydroelectricity is a matter of some debate, it IS a renewable energy source with negligible long-term emissions.
So, in a place like Quebec, you'd be switching from gas-burning internal combustion to centralized hydro plants. That'd go a long way to reducing pollution in Quebec.