Let's see. Loading the news.bbc.co.uk from Western Canada, right... now!
10 seconds to render the whole page. OK, that's been significantly faster than I've been experiencing the last few days, It's been about 30-40 seconds in some instances in the past several days.
Do try the low graphics version of the BBC, it loads almost instantly, and you can click on "Low Graphics" version while the rest of the page is trying to load.
CNN does seem significantly better than years ago during major events. They must have tackling the planetary event slashdot effect thing down. But then again, I voted "Any non-us venue" on the poll..:)
Heh.. someone who shares my own assessment of the last Osama tape..
I was saying this a few weeks ago. People need to think about this.
If you're Osama, and you're a friend of Saddam, you've got cells training in Iraq, what do you do? SAY NOTHING. You want as little association with Al-Queda and Iraq as possible so that things go as smoothly as possible.
Now, if you're Osama, and you hate Saddams guts (secular regime, bastard invaded Kuwait, a good Muslim country), and you know the world hates your guts, what do you do? "Saddam? Me? We're best of buddies! Viva Iraq!" American on the street hears this, goes all pro-war on Iraq, and Iraq gets the crap bombed out of it. Take out your enemy and gain a generation of followers.
Now granted, Osama called for the support of the PEOPLE of Iraq and not it's leadership (even calling the leadership of Iraq infidels in the speech), but in this Saddam = Iraq CNN/MSNBC world, nobody on this side of the pond notices or cares.
This assumes Osama is a rational thinker, or at least understands the mob mentality of both the Western and Muslim world. Considering what he's managed to do to date, I don't have any reason to doubt this assessment.
Re:Not a troll: How many civilians died last time?
on
Strike on Iraq
·
· Score: 1
I know that deaths don't occur if there is no action as well.
As Wally Schirra would have said: "I'm not happy with the situation".
Ideally, the combined pressure of miliary threat (providing a level of containment) while inspections occured and more time to come up for a peaceful solution. Slow and methodical disarmament, even if it's resisted grudingly
I know that's not an ideal ideal either...:(
The whole thing just sucks.
Re:Not a troll: How many civilians died last time?
on
Strike on Iraq
·
· Score: 1
On September 11th, every one of us became a New Yorker.
On March 17th, every one of us, in one way or another, became a terrorist.
Think about it a bit...
---
On another note, which side are you on? Saddam Hussein's or Osama Bin Laden's?
Anti-war protester? Not supporting the American war machine? Then you support Saddam! You bastard.
Pro-war patriot? Taking out Saddam (the leader of a secular regime and Osama's enemy) and setting the middle east on fire in an Anti-American Rage, breeding a new generation of future terrorists? Then you support Osama Bin Laden! You bastard.
Pick your poison... Or perhaps take a deep breath and count to 10 before you start pointing fingers and calling names.
I've got Karma to burn tonight.. Bring it on...
Re:Not a troll: How many civilians died last time?
on
Strike on Iraq
·
· Score: 5, Informative
Seen this quoted in a few places... Best to search around for other numbers. I can't find any US numbers, just Iraqi and 3rd party (i.e. UN) numbers.
Approximately 3,500 civilians were killed during the U.S.-led air strike campaign in August 1990, and more than 9000 homes were destroyed. The civilian death toll rose to 110,000 after the bombing stopped, and of those 70,000 were children under the age of 15. Civilians in Iraq continue to suffer as a result of "Operation Desert Storm," despite the cessation of military attacks in 1991. Incidents with landmines and unexploded ordinance have added thousands of victims to the total. According to Unicef, the U.S.-led economic sanctions imposed on Iraq, in effect for more than a decade, have claimed over one million lives, the majority of whom are children and the elderly. In the wider "War on Terror" more civilians have now died in Afghanistan than did in the World Trade Tower and Pentagon attacks combined according to Professor Marc W. Herold at the Whittemore School of Business & Economics, in Durham, New Hampshire.
We'll meet again
on
Strike on Iraq
·
· Score: -1, Offtopic
Had Vera Lynn playing in my headphones most of the day.
For those of you who don't get it, try to watch less CNN next time around...
I think I'll try to set up a tape of Dr Strangelove playing in a continuous loop at work tomorrow.
We'll meet again Vera Lynn
We'll meet again, don't know where, don't know when, But I know we'll meet again, some sunny day. Keep smiling through, just like you always do, 'Til the blue skies drive the dark clouds far away. So will you please say hello to the folks that I know, Tell them I won't be long. They'll be happy to know that as you saw me go, I was singing this song.
We'll meet again, don't know where, don't know when, But I know we'll meet again, some sunny day.
So will you please say hello to the folks that I know, Tell them I won't be long. They'll be happy to know that as you saw me go, I was singing this song.
Keep smiling through, just like you always do, 'Til the blue skies drive the dark clouds far away.
Carbon nanotubes a meter wide, as thin as a piece of paper, but really, REALLY strong.
How about dropping down the thing like a firepole?
I'm serious. Get a manual clamp to go around the nanotube, and have it crawl slowly (perhaps 100m/minute) down.
(quick calculations 100,000km - 100m/s -- probably bad... won't be people out at 100000km, just the anchor. Oh well.)
Never mind.. that would take 1.9 years...
Portable Hypergolic thrust ring? Go fast at first, then slow down once you get to 100 miles. You'd have to slow down to once you got the atmosphere. Perhaps still possible.
CNN's probably a bad example, as the content would have to be updated more frequently... And you'd need some way of having a "revision model", so that sites could be updated. I guess it would be up to the clients to ditch old versions of pages.
Might also need some sort of (eep!) central authority to verify pages were who they claimed to be (so I couldn't take over CNN, for example). Maybe just signed keys for each content provider would be good enough?
Does anyone know what it would take to get the DOS Style extended characters (the nice straight lines for walls instead of - and | rendering in Linux? I prefer the slightly smoother look of the DOS graphics (but not too smooth)
also (heathen!) is there a way to turn on (gasp!) arrow keys?
I never was really fond of graffiti, it was a pain to try to type in.
If you were trying to type your graffiti instead of writing it... that miiiiight just have been part of the problem....;)
Actually, you could create a "graffiti" keyboard, with the graffiti symbols instead of letters. That could sorta be cool. ThinkGeek anyone? Nah, probably an infringement.
Well, seeing as how the show was only supposed to last exactly 5 seasons and no more, and the show ends in a major cliffhanger, fans of the show are a bit bent up about it. In shows where overall story arc matter (as opposed to everything-back-they-way-they-started-when-the-epi sode-started shows), getting the last chapter cut out of your book can be fairly upsetting.
Babylon 5 was in a similar situation. After really struggling out of the blocks and looking like it was going to make it, there were signs on the wall that 4 seasons might indeed be it. JMS tried to wrap things up nicely to end the show after 4 seasons, and then notice that the 5th and final season would go ahead came late in the year. As a consequnce (and IMHO), the 5th season suffered as a consequence, feeling more like an add on set of minor story arcs. But at least there was closure if it only went 4 seasons. Farscape's just going to end mid-stream.
I think some people see this on the scale of New Line Cinema saying that LotR:Return of the King wouldn't air in theatres. (How much importance you place on both of these is a presonal preference)
The only difference is newer special effects and the evil terminator is a buxom blonde, with big breasts, and wearing a tight red leather outfit.
Red Leather? Does that mean she's as cool as Ka D'Argo?
Sorry, I can't find the original slashdot comment. For those who know what I'm talking about (black leather, not cool enough for red leather, repeat)... well, you're as lame as I am...
With the predominance of wireless open networks, I'm surprised no-one has suggested all hooking up all the wireless nodes together into one giant peer-to-peer network, not just for file transfer, but for Internet as well.
Get a wireless hub and a wireless card that can call up your neighbours hubs. Then when a request comes through, throw it to your neighbours (hot potato style, ala FIDOnet) until the request comes to a computer that can handle the request (perhaps a machine with a land-line connection).
No ISP. No last mile. *Everything* is the last mile.
Probably about 5 years ahead of its time. Need enough wireless saturation to make it work.
This is slightly better than the drek that comes out on April 1st. I'd actually find it amusing if on April 1st, there was a real article posted, repeated over and over again all day by different editors.
Slashdot Mirror
Let's see. Loading the news.bbc.co.uk from Western Canada, right... now!
:)
10 seconds to render the whole page. OK, that's been significantly faster than I've been experiencing the last few days, It's been about 30-40 seconds in some instances in the past several days.
Do try the low graphics version of the BBC, it loads almost instantly, and you can click on "Low Graphics" version while the rest of the page is trying to load.
CNN does seem significantly better than years ago during major events. They must have tackling the planetary event slashdot effect thing down. But then again, I voted "Any non-us venue" on the poll..
Heh.. someone who shares my own assessment of the last Osama tape..
I was saying this a few weeks ago. People need to think about this.
If you're Osama, and you're a friend of Saddam, you've got cells training in Iraq, what do you do? SAY NOTHING. You want as little association with Al-Queda and Iraq as possible so that things go as smoothly as possible.
Now, if you're Osama, and you hate Saddams guts (secular regime, bastard invaded Kuwait, a good Muslim country), and you know the world hates your guts, what do you do?
"Saddam? Me? We're best of buddies! Viva Iraq!" American on the street hears this, goes all pro-war on Iraq, and Iraq gets the crap bombed out of it. Take out your enemy and gain a generation of followers.
Now granted, Osama called for the support of the PEOPLE of Iraq and not it's leadership (even calling the leadership of Iraq infidels in the speech), but in this Saddam = Iraq CNN/MSNBC world, nobody on this side of the pond notices or cares.
This assumes Osama is a rational thinker, or at least understands the mob mentality of both the Western and Muslim world. Considering what he's managed to do to date, I don't have any reason to doubt this assessment.
No Iraqis are being killed.
These are not the droids you're looking for.
I know that deaths don't occur if there is no action as well.
:(
As Wally Schirra would have said: "I'm not happy with the situation".
Ideally, the combined pressure of miliary threat (providing a level of containment) while inspections occured and more time to come up for a peaceful solution. Slow and methodical disarmament, even if it's resisted grudingly
I know that's not an ideal ideal either...
The whole thing just sucks.
Who was talking about assigning blame?
I just care that people are dying.
A little phrase I've been working on..
On September 11th, every one of us became a New Yorker.
On March 17th, every one of us, in one way or another, became a terrorist.
Think about it a bit...
---
On another note, which side are you on? Saddam Hussein's or Osama Bin Laden's?
Anti-war protester? Not supporting the American war machine? Then you support Saddam! You bastard.
Pro-war patriot? Taking out Saddam (the leader of a secular regime and Osama's enemy) and setting the middle east on fire in an Anti-American Rage, breeding a new generation of future terrorists? Then you support Osama Bin Laden! You bastard.
Pick your poison... Or perhaps take a deep breath and count to 10 before you start pointing fingers and calling names.
I've got Karma to burn tonight.. Bring it on...
Seen this quoted in a few places... Best to search around for other numbers. I can't find any US numbers, just Iraqi and 3rd party (i.e. UN) numbers.
Here's a link:
http://www.futurenet.org/iraq/morecostofwar.htm
And here's relevant text:
Approximately 3,500 civilians were killed during the U.S.-led air strike campaign in August 1990, and more than 9000 homes were destroyed. The civilian death toll rose to 110,000 after the bombing stopped, and of those 70,000 were children under the age of 15. Civilians in Iraq continue to suffer as a result of "Operation Desert Storm," despite the cessation of military attacks in 1991. Incidents with landmines and unexploded ordinance have added thousands of victims to the total. According to Unicef, the U.S.-led economic sanctions imposed on Iraq, in effect for more than a decade, have claimed over one million lives, the majority of whom are children and the elderly. In the wider "War on Terror" more civilians have now died in Afghanistan than did in the World Trade Tower and Pentagon attacks combined according to Professor Marc W. Herold at the Whittemore School of Business & Economics, in Durham, New Hampshire.
Had Vera Lynn playing in my headphones most of the day.
For those of you who don't get it, try to watch less CNN next time around...
I think I'll try to set up a tape of Dr Strangelove playing in a continuous loop at work tomorrow.
We'll meet again
Vera Lynn
We'll meet again, don't know where, don't know when,
But I know we'll meet again, some sunny day.
Keep smiling through, just like you always do,
'Til the blue skies drive the dark clouds far away.
So will you please say hello to the folks that I know,
Tell them I won't be long.
They'll be happy to know that as you saw me go,
I was singing this song.
We'll meet again, don't know where, don't know when,
But I know we'll meet again, some sunny day.
So will you please say hello to the folks that I know,
Tell them I won't be long.
They'll be happy to know that as you saw me go,
I was singing this song.
Keep smiling through, just like you always do,
'Til the blue skies drive the dark clouds far away.
The universe is slowly cooling, and will eventually cool to absolute zero (killing all life), or so the theory goes. ...
Thus finally allowing Mickey Mouse to pass into the public domain.
I didn't think Hell was supposed to be part of this universe....
Comic Book Guy voice: But in Bizzaro World, that would mean that Mickey Mouse would rule forever!
Carbon nanotubes a meter wide, as thin as a piece of paper, but really, REALLY strong.
How about dropping down the thing like a firepole?
I'm serious. Get a manual clamp to go around the nanotube, and have it crawl slowly (perhaps 100m/minute) down.
(quick calculations 100,000km - 100m/s -- probably bad... won't be people out at 100000km, just the anchor. Oh well.)
Never mind.. that would take 1.9 years...
Portable Hypergolic thrust ring? Go fast at first, then slow down once you get to 100 miles. You'd have to slow down to once you got the atmosphere. Perhaps still possible.
Speaking on behalf of the Slashdot community.... .. we totally understand if you dupe this story tomorrow.
No humor intended. Let's all keep track of this one.
How far away is this from a
p2p://www.cnn.com/
style link for Explorer/Mozilla/Opera/Konqurer?
Turn everyone's browser cache into p2p.
CNN's probably a bad example, as the content would have to be updated more frequently... And you'd need some way of having a "revision model", so that sites could be updated. I guess it would be up to the clients to ditch old versions of pages.
Might also need some sort of (eep!) central authority to verify pages were who they claimed to be (so I couldn't take over CNN, for example). Maybe just signed keys for each content provider would be good enough?
Does anyone know what it would take to get the DOS Style extended characters (the nice straight lines for walls instead of - and | rendering in Linux? I prefer the slightly smoother look of the DOS graphics (but not too smooth)
also (heathen!) is there a way to turn on (gasp!) arrow keys?
I never was really fond of graffiti, it was a pain to try to type in.
;)
If you were trying to type your graffiti instead of writing it... that miiiiight just have been part of the problem....
Actually, you could create a "graffiti" keyboard, with the graffiti symbols instead of letters. That could sorta be cool. ThinkGeek anyone? Nah, probably an infringement.
In Soviet Russia, YOU payback RIAA!
Um, Wait a sec...
Damn lameness filter, won't let me post allcaps.
in soviet russia, allcaps post prevents lameness filter from working!
Well, seeing as how the show was only supposed to last exactly 5 seasons and no more, and the show ends in a major cliffhanger, fans of the show are a bit bent up about it. In shows where overall story arc matter (as opposed to everything-back-they-way-they-started-when-the-epi sode-started shows), getting the last chapter cut out of your book can be fairly upsetting.
Babylon 5 was in a similar situation. After really struggling out of the blocks and looking like it was going to make it, there were signs on the wall that 4 seasons might indeed be it. JMS tried to wrap things up nicely to end the show after 4 seasons, and then notice that the 5th and final season would go ahead came late in the year. As a consequnce (and IMHO), the 5th season suffered as a consequence, feeling more like an add on set of minor story arcs. But at least there was closure if it only went 4 seasons. Farscape's just going to end mid-stream.
I think some people see this on the scale of New Line Cinema saying that LotR:Return of the King wouldn't air in theatres. (How much importance you place on both of these is a presonal preference)
User Friendly is ssooo on top of this one....
The new feature of slashcode to cut down on duplicate stories...
Post this early, funny. Post this late, redundant... better click submit now...
"XML dialect"?
:)
It's called a schema.
Talk about embrace and extend. Sounds like this will be more "XML-like" than real XML...
The only difference is newer special effects and the evil terminator is a buxom blonde, with big breasts, and wearing a tight red leather outfit.
Red Leather? Does that mean she's as cool as Ka D'Argo?
Sorry, I can't find the original slashdot comment. For those who know what I'm talking about (black leather, not cool enough for red leather, repeat)... well, you're as lame as I am...
Canadians point their guns at food.
If you had to eat whatever you shot and killed, the world would be a very different place.
(then again those bears are pretty chewy...)
With the predominance of wireless open networks, I'm surprised no-one has suggested all hooking up all the wireless nodes together into one giant peer-to-peer network, not just for file transfer, but for Internet as well.
Get a wireless hub and a wireless card that can call up your neighbours hubs. Then when a request comes through, throw it to your neighbours (hot potato style, ala FIDOnet) until the request comes to a computer that can handle the request (perhaps a machine with a land-line connection).
No ISP. No last mile. *Everything* is the last mile.
Probably about 5 years ahead of its time. Need enough wireless saturation to make it work.
Just release them from a silver derigible and pretend you're the mothership.
Bored on a sunny day? Get a huge tank of helium, and about a thousand oblong silver balloons.
Then drive around following them, pointing "What's THAT?!!".
Great fun.
This is slightly better than the drek that comes out on April 1st. I'd actually find it amusing if on April 1st, there was a real article posted, repeated over and over again all day by different editors.