Ethernet's strength is it's flexiblity, not it's speed per se. It can handle changing network environments where hardware or software is added and removed continually, and you never know quite where the bandwith is most needed. You just plug it all in, and ethernet does a decent job of neotiating who gets to use the bandwidth.
But it's never been a really high speed protocol. It's easy to beat, speed-wise, as long as you know what the network use looks like ahead of time.
Which of course is a killer for most general use, but for specialty use that's not so much of a problem.
How many different hardware configurations do you think the State Department officially deploys, hmmm? There's a couple laptops, and a couple desktops, and that's it. (Changed every couple of years, of course. And a particular office may have three-four generations of setups in it.)
IIRC, the sequence was: Boot from install disk, write disk image, run setup program to tweak local settings. Given that sequence, you can support a decent number of standard configurations, just by having the setup program modify the disk image.
I haven't done much of this in the corporate world, but it seemed like a logical system to me.
IIRC (it's been a while since I did IT support for the state department), a classified computer (the only type they are talking about a ban on) shouldn't be connected to the Internet at all. It might be connected to the State Department's own secure network, but even that is a question.
(As for wiping it and installing their own software: duh. There's a disk image with the standard State Department software, and it is written to every computer. That's not even security: that's just the easist way to do the installs.)
As others have said in this thread: the main difference it really makes is to the graphics performance. The iMac has a dedicated GPU. Which is a better performing solution. (But also a more expensive one.)
Opera probably makes most of their money these days from 'embedded' browsers for lower-resolution (and lower power) devices. They have browsers for just about any phone or PDA out there, which they either sell to the manufacurers to bundle or sell seperately.
Their embedded browsers have just about the same level of standards support as their desktop browser, so this works really well.
Firefox is nice, but they don't even compete in this market.
I'm sure it takes Google time to install new machines. If they didn't have installs scheduled that would hook into this system and the space needed was growing exponetially, even they could be caught off-guard.
Sorry, I had heard of Farsi, but never of Faroese. As Farsi doesn't use the Latin/English alphabet, and he admited he wasn't the best speaker of English, I thought maybe he didn't know the 'standard' romanization for his language name, and attempted to spell it phonetically. (I've seen it happen before.)
For Faroese, if it is related to Icelandic you could try Spamassassin set on Icelandic and see what happens. I don't know how Spamassassin determines languages, but they might be similar enough.
Since it would be a test, the worst that would be likely to happen is a single test message flagged incorrectly, at which point you change back.
You mean 'Farsi'? Maybe Google can't, but Spamassassin can recognise Persian and set it as the perfered language. Farsi would be a dialect of that, so that should do what you want.
Sure there are. Let's see, from my own inbox, I've got postgresql.org (Postgres mailing list), perl.org (Perl mailing lists), benzedrine.cx (PF mailing list)...
Anyone who regularly sends email to multiple other people is a 'mass mailer'. I'm on at least a dozen different disscusion or announcement lists that I have signed up for.
Um, error exists in both directions. Limiting error in one without concern for the other usually increases the other. (Instead of limiting the error you usually shift the range.) This is known.
Actually, this was one of the reasons Macs orginially got seen more often in movies: they had the ablity to change their refresh rate, so you could eliminate that flicker.
Nowdays just about any computer can change refresh rate (within limits), so it isn't so much of a problem.
Probably because the likely winner is whomever's console wins the next round of the console wars. That'll be the largest installed base of players for a while: consoles that can play movies.
Forget technical merit of the disks. This is going to be decided based on XBox and PlayStation sales.
So, the movie will never be the same experince as playing the game. That's obvious.
It is still possible to write a good movie based on the plot points of a game. "Tomb Raider" comes to mind, as does "Mortal Kombat". Neither is all-time great cinema, but they are both perfectly good movies. They took the plot points of the video games and built a good story around them.
If you can't make a good movie from a video game that's a failing of the writers you are using, not of the concept itself. Given the quality of plots coming out of Hollywood in general, it should be obvious that good writing is in seriously short supply.
I'm not familiar with the devices in question, but I imagine it's fairly easy to tell if the driver is aware - when you're driving your eyes are constantly moving to scan the road for hazards. If you stop concentrating it's reasonable to think that you'll probably stop moving your eyes (so much) or at least the pattern of eye movement would change.
And all of that looks much like looking around at the scenery, or looking for animals in the fields, or... None of which is concentrating on the road.
A sufficiantly subtle AI might be able to tell the difference. Of course, if it were that subtle it might as well drive the car for you.
I'm afraid I think you're probably wrong here - you don't have to really be paying a lot of attention to stay in a lane since most roads are pretty predictable - the road isn't going to change between the time you first saw it on the horizon and the time you get to that point. The real problem is that you can be driving along for a very long time whilest not really paying attention and then something you weren't expecting happens like the guy infront of you stamps on his brakes.
Find an empty road and try it, I dare you. Close your eyes and see how long it is before you hit the rumble strips. (And please, use a road with rumble strips!)
Yes, the road doesn't change much since you saw it on the horizon. At normal driving speeds that is 10-30 seconds away. But even that is irrelevent: how often does the road change, period, is the relevent question. How often does something come up that you have to react to?
You have to react to every turn in the road, every drift of your steering alignment, every strong gust of wind, every obsticle in the road, every other car on the road... It is a constantly changing environment, where you have to react to just about everything in it. (Somehow.)
Contrast this to baggage security: You are in the same chair, looking at the same monitor, looking at bags that basically have the same items in them: clothes, books, electronics, toleiteries. If you are really unlucky, once in a blue moon you'll have something real that you need to actually react to. In the meantime you've looked at millions of closely similar items that you don't have to react to. This is a basically static environment, where you must react to occasional (probably hard-to-see) differences.
As I said: this is proven hard for humans. We don't do it well. We get bored, our brain lies to us, and we get restless. We miss things.
they've got devices coming out for cars and trucks that test driver awareness far more subtly than just popping up a test picture at random... the software actually monitors the drivers eye movements and other parameters... so there shouldn't be anything stopping them from doing something similar for this x-ray scanner application...
Those can tell you if the driver is awake, but not if they are paying attention. Fortunatly, someone driving a car has to pay attention fairly routinely just to stay in the lane and on the road, so 'awake == aware' (generally) in that situation.
For the this screening application, it is quite possible to be awake while not being aware. They can be fully focused on the screen and just not notice because their brain didn't realize that it had to notice. As I said; this is a well-known failing of the human mind. You are likely to see what you expect to see in a situation that closely resembles a common situation.
Oh, and yes, a good AI would be perfect for this job. Unfortunately, we don't have one good enough for it yet. An AI can spot a known weapon, but not an unknown one. A human can spot an unknown weapon. If they are awake and aware.
It is a wise one: it keeps the screeners from getting to bored with their jobs. Since something they have to react to comes up moderately often, they will stay alert enough to react to it. If it didn't the fact that months go by without them having to actually react to any of the bags will mean they stop expecting to react, and then stop noticing what's actually in them.
This is all standard psychology: People aren't good at finding rare exceptions in repetative data. That is one of the reasons we invented computers. Unfortunately, a computer can't spot a weird bomb, so we need an actual intelegnce manning it. That means a human. So, we play these tricks on ourselves to keep those humans working at an acceptable level.
The same way you assign a value to anything else in a capitalist system: by what the market price for it is. (Or would be, if it were on the market.)
That price is influenced both by what people are willing to pay for it and what you are willing to sell it for. If the two go to far out of wack, you either get obcene profits or bankrupsy. (Depending on which way they are out of wack.) In the former case, someone else should enter the market, and start a price war. In the latter, you are being forced out.
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Ethernet's strength is it's flexiblity, not it's speed per se. It can handle changing network environments where hardware or software is added and removed continually, and you never know quite where the bandwith is most needed. You just plug it all in, and ethernet does a decent job of neotiating who gets to use the bandwidth.
But it's never been a really high speed protocol. It's easy to beat, speed-wise, as long as you know what the network use looks like ahead of time.
Which of course is a killer for most general use, but for specialty use that's not so much of a problem.
My iPod was assembled in China.
I can't remember where all the Mac assembly plants are off the top of my head, but at least some of them are in China.
How many different hardware configurations do you think the State Department officially deploys, hmmm? There's a couple laptops, and a couple desktops, and that's it. (Changed every couple of years, of course. And a particular office may have three-four generations of setups in it.)
IIRC, the sequence was: Boot from install disk, write disk image, run setup program to tweak local settings. Given that sequence, you can support a decent number of standard configurations, just by having the setup program modify the disk image.
I haven't done much of this in the corporate world, but it seemed like a logical system to me.
IIRC (it's been a while since I did IT support for the state department), a classified computer (the only type they are talking about a ban on) shouldn't be connected to the Internet at all. It might be connected to the State Department's own secure network, but even that is a question.
(As for wiping it and installing their own software: duh. There's a disk image with the standard State Department software, and it is written to every computer. That's not even security: that's just the easist way to do the installs.)
I'm reminded of a certain politician from when I was in high school in Kenya. He was found dismembered, burned, shot, and in bag in the river.
Official verdict: Suicide. "It could happen to anyone," was the judge's quote. (I think he was thinking it could happen to him.)
As others have said in this thread: the main difference it really makes is to the graphics performance. The iMac has a dedicated GPU. Which is a better performing solution. (But also a more expensive one.)
Opera probably makes most of their money these days from 'embedded' browsers for lower-resolution (and lower power) devices. They have browsers for just about any phone or PDA out there, which they either sell to the manufacurers to bundle or sell seperately.
Their embedded browsers have just about the same level of standards support as their desktop browser, so this works really well.
Firefox is nice, but they don't even compete in this market.
Ah, yes, the port of PF from OpenBSD...
I'm sure it takes Google time to install new machines. If they didn't have installs scheduled that would hook into this system and the space needed was growing exponetially, even they could be caught off-guard.
People are always telling each other to be sensible, to go along with the flow, to not rock the boat to much...
Sorry, I had heard of Farsi, but never of Faroese. As Farsi doesn't use the Latin/English alphabet, and he admited he wasn't the best speaker of English, I thought maybe he didn't know the 'standard' romanization for his language name, and attempted to spell it phonetically. (I've seen it happen before.)
For Faroese, if it is related to Icelandic you could try Spamassassin set on Icelandic and see what happens. I don't know how Spamassassin determines languages, but they might be similar enough.
Since it would be a test, the worst that would be likely to happen is a single test message flagged incorrectly, at which point you change back.
You mean 'Farsi'? Maybe Google can't, but Spamassassin can recognise Persian and set it as the perfered language. Farsi would be a dialect of that, so that should do what you want.
Sure there are. Let's see, from my own inbox, I've got postgresql.org (Postgres mailing list), perl.org (Perl mailing lists), benzedrine.cx (PF mailing list)...
Anyone who regularly sends email to multiple other people is a 'mass mailer'. I'm on at least a dozen different disscusion or announcement lists that I have signed up for.
Um, error exists in both directions. Limiting error in one without concern for the other usually increases the other. (Instead of limiting the error you usually shift the range.) This is known.
What's news here?
It may also be they want to be sure their server is rock solid...
Actually, this was one of the reasons Macs orginially got seen more often in movies: they had the ablity to change their refresh rate, so you could eliminate that flicker.
Nowdays just about any computer can change refresh rate (within limits), so it isn't so much of a problem.
Netscape was selling products when Microsoft came along. They didn't start giving away their browser until Microsoft was giving theirs away.
They were probably being forced to document the code so their successors know where to look for specific screwups.
Probably because the likely winner is whomever's console wins the next round of the console wars. That'll be the largest installed base of players for a while: consoles that can play movies.
Forget technical merit of the disks. This is going to be decided based on XBox and PlayStation sales.
So, the movie will never be the same experince as playing the game. That's obvious.
It is still possible to write a good movie based on the plot points of a game. "Tomb Raider" comes to mind, as does "Mortal Kombat". Neither is all-time great cinema, but they are both perfectly good movies. They took the plot points of the video games and built a good story around them.
If you can't make a good movie from a video game that's a failing of the writers you are using, not of the concept itself. Given the quality of plots coming out of Hollywood in general, it should be obvious that good writing is in seriously short supply.
And all of that looks much like looking around at the scenery, or looking for animals in the fields, or... None of which is concentrating on the road.
A sufficiantly subtle AI might be able to tell the difference. Of course, if it were that subtle it might as well drive the car for you.
Find an empty road and try it, I dare you. Close your eyes and see how long it is before you hit the rumble strips. (And please, use a road with rumble strips!)
Yes, the road doesn't change much since you saw it on the horizon. At normal driving speeds that is 10-30 seconds away. But even that is irrelevent: how often does the road change, period, is the relevent question. How often does something come up that you have to react to?
You have to react to every turn in the road, every drift of your steering alignment, every strong gust of wind, every obsticle in the road, every other car on the road... It is a constantly changing environment, where you have to react to just about everything in it. (Somehow.)
Contrast this to baggage security: You are in the same chair, looking at the same monitor, looking at bags that basically have the same items in them: clothes, books, electronics, toleiteries. If you are really unlucky, once in a blue moon you'll have something real that you need to actually react to. In the meantime you've looked at millions of closely similar items that you don't have to react to. This is a basically static environment, where you must react to occasional (probably hard-to-see) differences.
As I said: this is proven hard for humans. We don't do it well. We get bored, our brain lies to us, and we get restless. We miss things.
Those can tell you if the driver is awake, but not if they are paying attention. Fortunatly, someone driving a car has to pay attention fairly routinely just to stay in the lane and on the road, so 'awake == aware' (generally) in that situation.
For the this screening application, it is quite possible to be awake while not being aware. They can be fully focused on the screen and just not notice because their brain didn't realize that it had to notice. As I said; this is a well-known failing of the human mind. You are likely to see what you expect to see in a situation that closely resembles a common situation.
Oh, and yes, a good AI would be perfect for this job. Unfortunately, we don't have one good enough for it yet. An AI can spot a known weapon, but not an unknown one. A human can spot an unknown weapon. If they are awake and aware.
It is a wise one: it keeps the screeners from getting to bored with their jobs. Since something they have to react to comes up moderately often, they will stay alert enough to react to it. If it didn't the fact that months go by without them having to actually react to any of the bags will mean they stop expecting to react, and then stop noticing what's actually in them.
This is all standard psychology: People aren't good at finding rare exceptions in repetative data. That is one of the reasons we invented computers. Unfortunately, a computer can't spot a weird bomb, so we need an actual intelegnce manning it. That means a human. So, we play these tricks on ourselves to keep those humans working at an acceptable level.
The system is simple. The application isn't.
The same way you assign a value to anything else in a capitalist system: by what the market price for it is. (Or would be, if it were on the market.)
That price is influenced both by what people are willing to pay for it and what you are willing to sell it for. If the two go to far out of wack, you either get obcene profits or bankrupsy. (Depending on which way they are out of wack.) In the former case, someone else should enter the market, and start a price war. In the latter, you are being forced out.