But what if you saved both images in an uncompressed format (bmp?), then compressed them both using a lossless format (gzip?), and compared the file sizes...
Do it with a bunch of images, and I expect you'll discover that the low-quality-gzipped image will be smaller than the high-quality-gzipped image...
Those are far from the "only" problems... they are the easiest problems to detect. There are countless forums on the Internet that discuss all the finer points of running veg oil in diesel engines... use google if you want to find them to read all the nitty gritty details.
General consensus is that running unprocessed veg oil most diesel engines will lead to coking over time, unless you heat the veg oil first.
If you aren't extremely careful to remove all water from the oil, you can wear out the cylinder walls very quickly, too... and won't necessarily even notice a degradation in performance until it's too late.
There are other problems that apply to specific models of diesel engines, too--you can't even run biodiesel in an '09 model year Volkswagen TDI engine without serious problems; I wouldn't even dream of trying straight VO.
Practically any veg oil *can* be used directly to power a diesel engine. But most diesel engines are not designed with such oils in mind, and therefor do not work well for extended periods of time with such oils. You risk damaging your engine if you run unmodified vegetable oil in most unmodified engines. This has been known for a century or so.
That's hardly "diesel oil" any more than other forms of vegetable oil are "diesel oil".
It still needs to be converted to biodiesel to be safe for long-term use in a diesel engine.
Of course it simplifies the oil extraction process greatly (usually done by pressing).
You're going to get a lot of impurities (like water!) if you do what you suggest, too.
I remember similar doomsday stories when the 28.8kbps modem came out. "With such fast Internet access to homes, the backbones will now be overloaded!"
News flash... ISPs and Telcos know how to increase their bandwidth, too... it's not just the last mile that's getting faster and allowing people to do more and more frivolous things with their Internet connections.
I'm sure the Wireless Internet Service Providers Association (WISPA -- http://www.wispa.org/) will be an invaluable resource for you. If they don't have the answers you seek already, they probably will as soon as they become available.
I want a cell phone that's powered by typos.
Then, given the habits of most texters... and some Slashdot posters, the more you text/post... the faster your battery charges!
My current employer hired me 25 months ago as a "Linux Systems Engineer"... I think what they really meant was "Admin." I have nearly 4 semesters worth of college credit, from back in 2001, but no degree. I have since advanced to the position of "Lead Software Developer"... which is actually an accurate title this time.
I can't say it's a "great" job; the pay is below par, but it is also a very small company in a small town. I have been offered other Linux "Admin" positions, which would have paid 50% more in the area, but turned them down, because of the enjoyment I get out of this position, that I felt would not be as likely at the other companies that have offered me positions.
When other folks my age would have been getting a CS degree, I was busy going into debt running a dial-up ISP (before dialup was completely dead)... So I have "real-world" experience where most people in my industry have a degree.
I have since hired two other friends, who now work under me. Neither of them have degrees, either...
Diesel contains approximately 30% more energy per volume than gasoline does. This means that as long as diesel costs less than 30% more than gasoline, diesel is cheaper on a per-mile basis than gasoline (all other factors in the vehicle being equal).
Incidentally, ethanol contains roughly 30% LESS energy per volume than gasoline. So if your E85 costs more than ~25% (85% x 30% = 25.5%) less than standard gasoline, you pay more per mile to drive on E85. If E10 costs more than 3% less than standard gasoline, you pay more to drive on E10 than on standard gasoline. Etc, etc.
(a) my cable provider's limited and value services don't need extra equipment (e.g. no equipment rental)
It will require equipment to sell it on a per-channel basis. At minimum, an analog signal filter (which incidentally, Cox Communications refuses to install any longer--I don't know about other cable companies).
And I'm not replying to the rest of your post, not as a snub.... but perhaps as a concession. I don't think we're going to convince each other any further than we already have. I think to come to any further conclusion, we'll have to wait and see how things turn out. And, as a non-cable-TV subscriber like yourself, I hope that you're right, because I would enjoy the opportunity to pay for the 3 channels I care about at a more reasonable price than is currently offered:) But as much as I hope that comes to pass, I still believe it is probably unlikely.
I don't agree. I currently do not purchase cable TV (only cable Internet) because of the price. I don't consider the high cost to be worth it. However, there are a number of cable TV channels I would be interested in getting if the price were right - an a la carte would let me do that.
But it probably won't be cheaper. It's already very cheap. If you take the worst possible price point with the least number of channels for a Cox Communications channel lineup in my area, you pay $4/month for 5 digital channels (equipment rental also required). That's $0.80/channel. Splitting the offer up to a per-channel basis will raise the administrative and technical cost. Let's assume a very conservative estimate of 100% more (I expect it would be much higer), so now the channels are $1.60/each. Now to get the 1 channel out of those 5 that you use will cost you $1.60 for the channel instead of $4.00 for all of them. You still have to pay for the basic cable service and equipment rental.
Current prices: $23/month ($11 just to have the cable activeated in your house, includes channels 2-22 (broadcast channels + local edu/gov chnls, etc) + $9 equipment rental + $4 for the channels)
New estimated prices: $21.60 ($11 access + $9 equipment + $1.60 channel)
As soon as you add a 2nd channel, the advantage has been lost. Add a 3rd, and you've lost.
Of course this assumes that the per-channel price will roughly based on the current average-price-per channel. I don't think it would be very closely related at all. I suspect a more realistic price will be $3-5 per channel. Not to mention, a lot of channels will go away entirely, as there are a lot of niche channels that people watch occasionally, but would not subscribe to if they had to pay per-channel--the weather channel would be an example for me. I would never pay for it separately, but if it's there, I might flip it on in the AM instead of pulling the forecast on the Internet.
This plan would likely lead to a more democratic/capitalistic selection of cable TV channels, and that might be good in its own right... But the long-term result will *not* be a reduction in cable TV prices by any noticeable amount, and will lead to an overall increase in cable operation overhead, and thus the *average* cable bill will go up.
Any time you add overhead, and the operational costs go up, someone has to pay for it--and that will get offloaded to the consumer in the long run. In this case, it will probably also reduce the number of available channels.
the groups that would like to have the 400+ channels
You missed one of my points. There still are not 400+ channels. If you subscribe to *every* channel available in an area, you get closer to 240 of them (and that includes ~20 spanish language channels, the ~60 premium movie channels, the ~10 PPV channels, and the ~20 HD channels that are freely available off-air; which gives us a more realistic number of 130). Their numbers reach up as high as 999 in some places, but that doesn't mean there are "hundreds of channels". This is one of the reasons this pay-per-channel concept is popular--there's a perception that a person is paying for "hundreds of channels." They aren't.
If this lawsuit results in a change in policy, it will mean nothing for most people. Selling channels on a per-channel basis is more complicated for the cable providers, and will thus be more expensive per-channel. Unless you literally watch only one cable channel, you will probably pay more to pick-and-choose 2-4 channels than you would pay for an entire package, including 90% channels you don't care about.
I used to work for Cox Communications, and in my area, "limited" cable is $11/month (channels 2-22, aka fancy rabbit ears). "Expanded" is an additional ~$30 (23-72). And the digital tiers are something like $2/month (for 5 to 20 channels per tier each). (HBO, Starz, Cinemax, etc, are priced entirely differently).
The digital channels (which are most popular to complain about--probably because there's the perception that there are "hundreds" of them due to their channel numbers reaching into the 300's and 400's in some cases) are by far the cheapest channels there are, and it doesn't make sense to break up a package that cheap.
Where it might have an impact for some people, is breaking up the "Expanded" tier (most cable companies have something similar), as the bulk of that $30/month price is the subscription fee the cable network pays to ESPN (something like $24/mo, if I recall).
If my memory is accurate, and the ESPN fee is $20+/month, then that means the other channels (23-72 minus ESPN) are $10/mo or less. And then it's suddenly very "reasonable" again.
Of course... if cable channels are sold a la carte, then the price per channel will go up by necessity. The *average* cable bill will still be roughly the same as it is now (assuming the programming also stays the same--and of course it wouldn't). The difference would be that families with 8 members who actually use 2 dozen channels would pay a higher cable bill, and single-member households (like mine) will only subscribe to 2 channels, and pay less.
I guess what it all comes down to me is: It's a lot of fuss about something that isn't a big deal, and it's just as likely (if not more likely) to hurt the consumer as it is to help them, except in fringe cases.
I'd like to see you boot a working Unix system without those tools. I'm not talking about running a shell. I'm talking about simply booting the system. Mounting the root filesystem, starting init, starting whatever daemons are necessary...
The Linux boot scripts depend *very* heavily on these tools. (That's not to say it's theoretically impossible to boot without using 'ls', 'cd', 'rm', etc... But you would need *something* that accomplishes the same functions.)
If that were the case this time, you'd think the "corporate types" involved would be eager to settle out of court (probably including removing the GPL code from their product, or making the source available, or possibly a combination of the two, and other remedies as well) the instant they discovered their "developer types" were doing something that was legally questionable. The fact that it's going to court at all suggests that the "corporate types" know exactly what they're doing. (Or they turn just as much of a blind eye to their "attorney types" as they do to their "development types", and don't actually care about making any money.)
If the GPL is found to be lacking in a court of law, GPLv4 (or whatever) will be released to plug the hole, and all subsequent version of GPL software will be released under a "good" license... and then we'll get to wait to see the GPLv4 taken to court, to see if the judge thinks it's more ironclad that time.
...that when we watch TV, we expect commercials. We think "public TV" is a novelty, so to speak. Same goes for radio. The same is even true for newspapers and magazines--which we even pay a subscription fee to read.
When we browse the web, however, commercials are an intrusion. We expect web sites to be free, and we think it's a violation if we see advertisements.
Why is this?
My guess is it's just a difference in the culture the different technologies grew out of. Traditional "mass media" grew out of commercial interests, the Internet grew out of the educational industries. I could be seeing things far too narrowly, though:)
What if you layer an ext3 filesystem on top of an NFS filesystem using UnionFS?
UnionFS 2.0 just came out, which supposedly takes care of the problem of "what if I modify the underlying filesystem?" It might work...
Then again, it might not, too:)
Maybe it's not a true quantum "computer", but is that bad? The first electronic "problem solving machines" weren't true computers, either. That doesn't mean that this "custom" quantum machine isn't a useful step in the right direction...
Slashdot Mirror
Do it with a bunch of images, and I expect you'll discover that the low-quality-gzipped image will be smaller than the high-quality-gzipped image...
Maybe? *shrug*
Those are far from the "only" problems... they are the easiest problems to detect. There are countless forums on the Internet that discuss all the finer points of running veg oil in diesel engines... use google if you want to find them to read all the nitty gritty details. General consensus is that running unprocessed veg oil most diesel engines will lead to coking over time, unless you heat the veg oil first. If you aren't extremely careful to remove all water from the oil, you can wear out the cylinder walls very quickly, too... and won't necessarily even notice a degradation in performance until it's too late. There are other problems that apply to specific models of diesel engines, too--you can't even run biodiesel in an '09 model year Volkswagen TDI engine without serious problems; I wouldn't even dream of trying straight VO.
Practically any veg oil *can* be used directly to power a diesel engine. But most diesel engines are not designed with such oils in mind, and therefor do not work well for extended periods of time with such oils. You risk damaging your engine if you run unmodified vegetable oil in most unmodified engines. This has been known for a century or so.
That's hardly "diesel oil" any more than other forms of vegetable oil are "diesel oil". It still needs to be converted to biodiesel to be safe for long-term use in a diesel engine. Of course it simplifies the oil extraction process greatly (usually done by pressing). You're going to get a lot of impurities (like water!) if you do what you suggest, too.
How is this different than the "corn plastic" that's been around for years? Like the stuff mentioned here... http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/plastic.html
News flash... ISPs and Telcos know how to increase their bandwidth, too... it's not just the last mile that's getting faster and allowing people to do more and more frivolous things with their Internet connections.
Sheesh.
I'm sure the Wireless Internet Service Providers Association (WISPA -- http://www.wispa.org/) will be an invaluable resource for you. If they don't have the answers you seek already, they probably will as soon as they become available.
I want a cell phone that's powered by typos. Then, given the habits of most texters... and some Slashdot posters, the more you text/post... the faster your battery charges!
Right now only Volkswagen and Mercedes offer diesel engine cars in the US
... and BMW with the 335d and the X5 xDrive35D
I can't say it's a "great" job; the pay is below par, but it is also a very small company in a small town. I have been offered other Linux "Admin" positions, which would have paid 50% more in the area, but turned them down, because of the enjoyment I get out of this position, that I felt would not be as likely at the other companies that have offered me positions.
When other folks my age would have been getting a CS degree, I was busy going into debt running a dial-up ISP (before dialup was completely dead)... So I have "real-world" experience where most people in my industry have a degree.
I have since hired two other friends, who now work under me. Neither of them have degrees, either...
I started using ytalk (a talk client with some extra features) since about 1998 to do similar things.
Diesel contains approximately 30% more energy per volume than gasoline does. This means that as long as diesel costs less than 30% more than gasoline, diesel is cheaper on a per-mile basis than gasoline (all other factors in the vehicle being equal). Incidentally, ethanol contains roughly 30% LESS energy per volume than gasoline. So if your E85 costs more than ~25% (85% x 30% = 25.5%) less than standard gasoline, you pay more per mile to drive on E85. If E10 costs more than 3% less than standard gasoline, you pay more to drive on E10 than on standard gasoline. Etc, etc.
It will require equipment to sell it on a per-channel basis. At minimum, an analog signal filter (which incidentally, Cox Communications refuses to install any longer--I don't know about other cable companies).
And I'm not replying to the rest of your post, not as a snub.... but perhaps as a concession. I don't think we're going to convince each other any further than we already have. I think to come to any further conclusion, we'll have to wait and see how things turn out. And, as a non-cable-TV subscriber like yourself, I hope that you're right, because I would enjoy the opportunity to pay for the 3 channels I care about at a more reasonable price than is currently offered :) But as much as I hope that comes to pass, I still believe it is probably unlikely.
But it probably won't be cheaper. It's already very cheap. If you take the worst possible price point with the least number of channels for a Cox Communications channel lineup in my area, you pay $4/month for 5 digital channels (equipment rental also required). That's $0.80/channel. Splitting the offer up to a per-channel basis will raise the administrative and technical cost. Let's assume a very conservative estimate of 100% more (I expect it would be much higer), so now the channels are $1.60/each. Now to get the 1 channel out of those 5 that you use will cost you $1.60 for the channel instead of $4.00 for all of them. You still have to pay for the basic cable service and equipment rental.
Current prices: $23/month ($11 just to have the cable activeated in your house, includes channels 2-22 (broadcast channels + local edu/gov chnls, etc) + $9 equipment rental + $4 for the channels) New estimated prices: $21.60 ($11 access + $9 equipment + $1.60 channel)
As soon as you add a 2nd channel, the advantage has been lost. Add a 3rd, and you've lost.
Of course this assumes that the per-channel price will roughly based on the current average-price-per channel. I don't think it would be very closely related at all. I suspect a more realistic price will be $3-5 per channel. Not to mention, a lot of channels will go away entirely, as there are a lot of niche channels that people watch occasionally, but would not subscribe to if they had to pay per-channel--the weather channel would be an example for me. I would never pay for it separately, but if it's there, I might flip it on in the AM instead of pulling the forecast on the Internet.
This plan would likely lead to a more democratic/capitalistic selection of cable TV channels, and that might be good in its own right... But the long-term result will *not* be a reduction in cable TV prices by any noticeable amount, and will lead to an overall increase in cable operation overhead, and thus the *average* cable bill will go up. Any time you add overhead, and the operational costs go up, someone has to pay for it--and that will get offloaded to the consumer in the long run. In this case, it will probably also reduce the number of available channels.
the groups that would like to have the 400+ channelsYou missed one of my points. There still are not 400+ channels. If you subscribe to *every* channel available in an area, you get closer to 240 of them (and that includes ~20 spanish language channels, the ~60 premium movie channels, the ~10 PPV channels, and the ~20 HD channels that are freely available off-air; which gives us a more realistic number of 130). Their numbers reach up as high as 999 in some places, but that doesn't mean there are "hundreds of channels". This is one of the reasons this pay-per-channel concept is popular--there's a perception that a person is paying for "hundreds of channels." They aren't.
If this lawsuit results in a change in policy, it will mean nothing for most people. Selling channels on a per-channel basis is more complicated for the cable providers, and will thus be more expensive per-channel. Unless you literally watch only one cable channel, you will probably pay more to pick-and-choose 2-4 channels than you would pay for an entire package, including 90% channels you don't care about.
I used to work for Cox Communications, and in my area, "limited" cable is $11/month (channels 2-22, aka fancy rabbit ears). "Expanded" is an additional ~$30 (23-72). And the digital tiers are something like $2/month (for 5 to 20 channels per tier each). (HBO, Starz, Cinemax, etc, are priced entirely differently).
The digital channels (which are most popular to complain about--probably because there's the perception that there are "hundreds" of them due to their channel numbers reaching into the 300's and 400's in some cases) are by far the cheapest channels there are, and it doesn't make sense to break up a package that cheap.
Where it might have an impact for some people, is breaking up the "Expanded" tier (most cable companies have something similar), as the bulk of that $30/month price is the subscription fee the cable network pays to ESPN (something like $24/mo, if I recall).
If my memory is accurate, and the ESPN fee is $20+/month, then that means the other channels (23-72 minus ESPN) are $10/mo or less. And then it's suddenly very "reasonable" again.
Of course... if cable channels are sold a la carte, then the price per channel will go up by necessity. The *average* cable bill will still be roughly the same as it is now (assuming the programming also stays the same--and of course it wouldn't). The difference would be that families with 8 members who actually use 2 dozen channels would pay a higher cable bill, and single-member households (like mine) will only subscribe to 2 channels, and pay less.
I guess what it all comes down to me is: It's a lot of fuss about something that isn't a big deal, and it's just as likely (if not more likely) to hurt the consumer as it is to help them, except in fringe cases.
I'd like to see you boot a working Unix system without those tools. I'm not talking about running a shell. I'm talking about simply booting the system. Mounting the root filesystem, starting init, starting whatever daemons are necessary... The Linux boot scripts depend *very* heavily on these tools. (That's not to say it's theoretically impossible to boot without using 'ls', 'cd', 'rm', etc... But you would need *something* that accomplishes the same functions.)
If that were the case this time, you'd think the "corporate types" involved would be eager to settle out of court (probably including removing the GPL code from their product, or making the source available, or possibly a combination of the two, and other remedies as well) the instant they discovered their "developer types" were doing something that was legally questionable. The fact that it's going to court at all suggests that the "corporate types" know exactly what they're doing. (Or they turn just as much of a blind eye to their "attorney types" as they do to their "development types", and don't actually care about making any money.)
If the GPL is found to be lacking in a court of law, GPLv4 (or whatever) will be released to plug the hole, and all subsequent version of GPL software will be released under a "good" license... and then we'll get to wait to see the GPLv4 taken to court, to see if the judge thinks it's more ironclad that time.
Well I know inflation is at least partly to blame for my shoe-string budget...
...that when we watch TV, we expect commercials. We think "public TV" is a novelty, so to speak. Same goes for radio. The same is even true for newspapers and magazines--which we even pay a subscription fee to read.
:)
When we browse the web, however, commercials are an intrusion. We expect web sites to be free, and we think it's a violation if we see advertisements.
Why is this?
My guess is it's just a difference in the culture the different technologies grew out of. Traditional "mass media" grew out of commercial interests, the Internet grew out of the educational industries. I could be seeing things far too narrowly, though
... or something like that.
What if you layer an ext3 filesystem on top of an NFS filesystem using UnionFS? UnionFS 2.0 just came out, which supposedly takes care of the problem of "what if I modify the underlying filesystem?" It might work... Then again, it might not, too :)
I never actually played the games (does that mean I'm not a true geek? *sigh* oh well), but I did enjoy the Final Fantasy movie.
Maybe it's not a true quantum "computer", but is that bad? The first electronic "problem solving machines" weren't true computers, either. That doesn't mean that this "custom" quantum machine isn't a useful step in the right direction...