This is as good a place to raise this question as any, I suppose... does TeX really have a future? Don't get me wrong - I love TeX; it is a very good typesetting language for most purposes, but its syntax is decidedly crufty and old-fashioned - in the Brave New World where everyone speaks XML, is a language like this really going to last? There are some very nice renderers coming along for XML-based typesetting systems, and even HTML isn't doing too badly... what do people think?
Is wireless deregulated, or do the telcos run that, too? I would be interested in seeing a price comparision of wireless vs. landline in Europe.
As far as I can make out, most European countries have at least one wireless network run by the "state" company or an offshoot of it (in actual fact, many of the "state" telcos have now been privatised), and several other networks run by private competitors.
The relative homogeneity of wireless networks in Europe (almost entirely GSM900 and GSM1800) has a lot to do with State regulation; basically, although the providers are private companies, the authorities in each country (and, probably, the European Union) stipulated in advance that These Shall Be The Standards. It's left us with a market which doesn't seem significantly less competitive than that prevailing in the USA (standards don't discourage innovation or competition, as we should know:), but which is nonetheless highly capable and flexible.
Regarding call costs of mobile versus land-line; the biggest difference between the European situation and what seems to be the prevailing standard in the USA is that here, it does not cost anything to receive a call (unless you're roaming to another network from your "home" network). Calls are pretty cheap - of the order of EUR0.02 to EUR0.30 per minute, depending on how much you pay in advance.
A concrete example: my landline (from eircom costs approximately EUR18 per month for the "line rental", and local calls cost EUR0.01 per minute off-peak, EUR0.05 per minute during business hours. Non-local calls cost the same off-peak, and EUR0.20 per minute peak. My cellphone (from Eircell) costs EUR30 per month, which includes 50 minutes of calls to anywhere in the country - subsequent calls cost between EUR0.15 and EUR0.46 per minute, depending on the time.
Overall, I find that I pay slightly more for my cellphone than for my landline, but I definitely use it a lot more.
One interesting thing to note is that the biggest players in the cellphone market (Nokia, Ericsson, Motorola and Panasonic) are all pushing Symbian's EPOC32 as an operating system for PDAs and "smart" cellphones. These companies are also quite hefty players in the communications infrastructure market in Europe, and GSM is much more widespread here than in the USA (it's practically universal). I'd say these organisations are well set to deliver a serious integrated mobile-comms system, at least in Europe, in the near future.
In his script, Eric has: # We don't deal with leap years here because the baseline day is after # the last leap year (1996) and there's a long time before the next # one (2004).
A recent experience made me realise that Microsoft have an uphill battle in trying to get the public to "rally 'round" them - the scene with Bill Gates in the South Park movie got a cheer! Lots of people really don't like MS, but are forced to live with their software...
Of course, this is a can of worms, but I really think that the SETI@Home project is almost infinitely more worthy than RC5 cracking. Consider the potential outcomes of each project: SETI: we discover an alien civilisation RC5: we discover that, given enough computer power, a particular encrypted message is crackable. The thing is : we already know that RC5-encoded messages are crackable, if enough CPU is thrown at it. Sure, the distributed.net project is a mildly interesting demonstration of massive parallelism over the Net, but so is SETI@Home, and is has a far more interesting goal, and the potential outcomes are almost incalculably earthshaking.
This was the design for the back of the "official" alt.fan.pratchett newsgroup T-shirt. The front had the Librarian (an orang-outan) sitting in front of a computer (all the keys were labelled "ook", with a bunch of banan(an)as and a number of a.f.p. in-jokes. The back was Death sitting in front of a keyboard, saying "HOW DO YOU TURN OFF CAPS LOCK".
From the/. comment (at the top): The book's a fun attempt to explain the science behind Prachett's incredibly funny world, Discworld. I was just pointing out that, in fact, it isn't.
Actually, The Science of Discworld is not about the physics of Terry Pratchett's Discworld, it's about the physics and history of our world, as seen through the eyes of the wizards in the Unseen University, on the Discworld. One of the best popular science books I've read - contains a rather good Discworld story, too.
When such a distribution becomes available, I imagine that lots of people will be taking a very close look at the source, to check for back doors... that's one of the big strengths of Open-Source - it's very hard to "slip something in" without it being easily noticeable.
ObMSbash: compare and contrast NT - do you trust all of Microsoft's programmers?
Didn't I hear that some court had ruled against the export restrictions on crypto, on constitutional grounds? What has become of this? Are appeals in progress, or can we expect repeal of the (ridiculous) restrictive legislation?
This article is worth printing out and keeping by your bedside. Even if I think the negative effects of excessive advocacy are overstated in the article, it's definitely the case that they are there. Be reasonable in all your works...
Slashdot Mirror
This is as good a place to raise this question as any, I suppose... does TeX really have a future? Don't get me wrong - I love TeX; it is a very good typesetting language for most purposes, but its syntax is decidedly crufty and old-fashioned - in the Brave New World where everyone speaks XML, is a language like this really going to last? There are some very nice renderers coming along for XML-based typesetting systems, and even HTML isn't doing too badly... what do people think?
As far as I can make out, most European countries have at least one wireless network run by the "state" company or an offshoot of it (in actual fact, many of the "state" telcos have now been privatised), and several other networks run by private competitors.
The relative homogeneity of wireless networks in Europe (almost entirely GSM900 and GSM1800) has a lot to do with State regulation; basically, although the providers are private companies, the authorities in each country (and, probably, the European Union) stipulated in advance that These Shall Be The Standards. It's left us with a market which doesn't seem significantly less competitive than that prevailing in the USA (standards don't discourage innovation or competition, as we should know :), but which is nonetheless highly capable and flexible.
Regarding call costs of mobile versus land-line; the biggest difference between the European situation and what seems to be the prevailing standard in the USA is that here, it does not cost anything to receive a call (unless you're roaming to another network from your "home" network). Calls are pretty cheap - of the order of EUR0.02 to EUR0.30 per minute, depending on how much you pay in advance.
A concrete example: my landline (from eircom costs approximately EUR18 per month for the "line rental", and local calls cost EUR0.01 per minute off-peak, EUR0.05 per minute during business hours. Non-local calls cost the same off-peak, and EUR0.20 per minute peak. My cellphone (from Eircell) costs EUR30 per month, which includes 50 minutes of calls to anywhere in the country - subsequent calls cost between EUR0.15 and EUR0.46 per minute, depending on the time.
Overall, I find that I pay slightly more for my cellphone than for my landline, but I definitely use it a lot more.
One interesting thing to note is that the biggest players in the cellphone market (Nokia, Ericsson, Motorola and Panasonic) are all pushing Symbian's EPOC32 as an operating system for PDAs and "smart" cellphones. These companies are also quite hefty players in the communications infrastructure market in Europe, and GSM is much more widespread here than in the USA (it's practically universal). I'd say these organisations are well set to deliver a serious integrated mobile-comms system, at least in Europe, in the near future.
In his script, Eric has:
# We don't deal with leap years here because the baseline day is after
# the last leap year (1996) and there's a long time before the next
# one (2004).
Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear...
A recent experience made me realise that Microsoft have an uphill battle in trying to get the public to "rally 'round" them - the scene with Bill Gates in the South Park movie got a cheer! Lots of people really don't like MS, but are forced to live with their software...
Hmm. The website is very light on content... anyone knoe whether there are more detailed specs of this machine anywhere?
Of course, this is a can of worms, but I really think that the SETI@Home project is almost infinitely more worthy than RC5 cracking. Consider the potential outcomes of each project:
SETI: we discover an alien civilisation
RC5: we discover that, given enough computer power, a particular encrypted message is crackable.
The thing is : we already know that RC5-encoded messages are crackable, if enough CPU is thrown at it. Sure, the distributed.net project is a mildly interesting demonstration of massive parallelism over the Net, but so is SETI@Home, and is has a far more interesting goal, and the potential outcomes are almost incalculably earthshaking.
This was the design for the back of the "official" alt.fan.pratchett newsgroup T-shirt. The front had the Librarian (an orang-outan) sitting in front of a computer (all the keys were labelled "ook", with a bunch of banan(an)as and a number of a.f.p. in-jokes. The back was Death sitting in front of a keyboard, saying "HOW DO YOU TURN OFF CAPS LOCK".
From the /. comment (at the top):
The book's a fun attempt to explain the science behind Prachett's incredibly funny world, Discworld.
I was just pointing out that, in fact, it isn't.
Actually, The Science of Discworld is not about the physics of Terry Pratchett's Discworld, it's about the physics and history of our world, as seen through the eyes of the wizards in the Unseen University, on the Discworld. One of the best popular science books I've read - contains a rather good Discworld story, too.
When such a distribution becomes available, I imagine that lots of people will be taking a very close look at the source, to check for back doors... that's one of the big strengths of Open-Source - it's very hard to "slip something in" without it being easily noticeable.
ObMSbash: compare and contrast NT - do you trust all of Microsoft's programmers?
Didn't I hear that some court had ruled against the export restrictions on crypto, on constitutional grounds? What has become of this? Are appeals in progress, or can we expect repeal of the (ridiculous) restrictive legislation?
This article is worth printing out and keeping by your bedside. Even if I think the negative effects of excessive advocacy are overstated in the article, it's definitely the case that they are there. Be reasonable in all your works...