Who do you ever get an e-mail from that is nothing more than an IMG tag? That's definately my number one spam-blocking rule: if it has an attachment, or is extremely small, and I don't recognize the address, delete it. If someone has something important to tell me, they send it in text, not as a picture with no other message content.
I have only one point of contention with your statements. Are you sure that 1c/mail is enough to make spamming non-economical? I mean, before the advent of e-mail (and even since), I received several spam snail mail messages per day at (I assume) the rate of 32c/mail (well, it was probably 20-some-odd cents then, but it continues in this 34?...37?...I don't know environment). I would like to agree that charging for spam would render it useless, but when compared to physical spam, I question the idea.
If you would argue that I am wrong, why? Is it simply that even 1c/mail would cut down _enough_ on spamming (since it wouldn't be free, there would have to be some limit on the number of mails a spammer could send) that the target audience is not large enough to ensure a high enough probability that someone will buy the product?
Perhaps there is a hidden idea here, in that if a spammer had to pay, then that would be an actual link back to them by which they could be punished for their violations of spam codes. I think there are different problems with this entirely, but it does seem like the case.
There is nothing worse than the possibility that an ISP will filter out a real email in their spam system.
Absolutely! I'm working at a company in a foreign city this summer. For the first week I was here, I was unable to check my home e-mail (due to the company's firewall). So, left with only my corporate account, I attempted to write my family/girlfriend from that. The entire week, I got nothing back from my girlfriend. Luckily, being the tech-conscious person I am, I naturaly assumed that it was the coporate mail server blocking everything from Hotmail. I was later proven correct, but for the week before I regained access to my home e-mail I assumed that I was in the dog house for something.;P
Dude - TEAM 17?! Those mofo's ROCK! I got addicted on the original worms, and I believe I've played every one since....although I'm looking around their site, and I think I've been out of the loop for a while... oops.
While I completely agree that the parent to your post is a moron, but just to answer one of your questions: You must keep dumping water in the boiler to keep the metal of the boiler from deforming. It's like leaving a pot on the stove - it will eventually blacken/deform. And, yes, it is true that the coal fires "must" be kept burning at a certain temperature. It is a lot more wasteful (time/money/coal) to stop and start one of these fires than it is to leave it going. (Quotes around must because one always *could* put out the fire and restart it, it's just inefficient.)
Great article! I just wish he hadn't contradicted himself at the end.
Oh, and when you write them, WRITE IN ALL CAPS.
Considering he had just argued earlier about how his editor had not been able to grok the paragraph that was written in all caps in his article, this wouldn't be very effective.
And, before you just flame the hell out of me, yes, I know he was just trying to make a joke.
Dude - I have to say that I think this is just exactly what is needed today. While it's fairly easy to learn some common graphics/input API today (Java's Swing, GTK, etc.), these can also be daunting when trying to do something like a game. A simple system like this would be great for getting newbies to learn the ins and outs of a system. Yes, I know it will have its own API to learn, but I'm betting it will be something more like putPixel/getPixel/isButtonPressed than frame.getContentPane().getGraphics() or whatever.
I remember learning to program in BASIC on an IBM PC Jr. It was great! The darn thing even came with a book to teach you how to do it! (or, at least mine had a book - I was young, so my parents could have bought it as extra, and I wouldn't have known). Following that I found a guy who was big in to Apple Basic and Logo. More fun to be had.
But, the great thing about all that was - it was simple. There were no extra libraries to worry about, no difficult configuration (you friggin' booted to BASIC from a floppy), just a place to code and test.
Of course, I finally moved on to C, but that was way back in the days of DOS and Win 3.1. If I wanted to draw to the screen, I friggin' called the monitor interrupt to change video modes, and set the memory at 0xA00000...(wow, it's been a while - whatever that number was). Still "simple", although a great next step - after learning the idea of "programming", I learned something about the actual structure of a computer.
Basically (sorry for the pun), I think it will be great for newbie programmers to be able to get their hands on some simple hardware to just goof around with. It will be easier for them to learn more difficult stuff if they can relate to something they already know.
By the way, I'm also really excited that this project includes Andre LaMothe. "Teach Yourself Programming in 21 Days" was an awesome book (and the first place I ran in to assembly). The guy really does a great job of explaining things.
Finally, I have to say that I also hope people really work at games for this machine. I think it will be very interesting. Of course the first months of its release will be Tetris/Space Invaders/Mario clones, but I have a feeling that if someone with a little bit of game know-how got into developing something for it, there could be a rather interesting game released. Sometimes restrictions (i.e. on hardware abilities) produce wonderful things. (I wish I could properly form the analogy to classical music (even though I'm leary of arguing by analogy here), but I can't remember the names of movements/composers/styles to do it.)...also, I plan on buying one, and I don't want to have only Tetris/Space Invaders/Mario along with my own creations to play on it.:)
Re:A bold step forward for Human Case Modding
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Actually, a friend and I were talking a few years back about a similar idea. This was back when "molecular gates" were the new big thing (basically physical gates made up of only a few molecules). We figured that in a few years, when they finally got the technology working well, the new fad would be animated tatoos. You would just implant the thing in the skin, and it would move around different colors of ink to animate the thing. The only thing we figured was that it would probably have to have a slow frame rate, as about the only clock possible was the beating of the heart.
Maybe someday, the lady will dance by herself, instead of only when the forearm flexes.:)
(Also, my appologies if the friend was still hoping to capitalize on this idea.)
You may think "so what?" but you probably haven't realized that the software [many of] these servers are running is specifically designed to run on UNIX, and not necessarily compatible with Linux.
First, thanks for posting a text version of this list!
Second, anyone else find it strange that Metallica is not on the list? I haven't listened to their new St. Anger album yet, so I can't say, "It's great, I can't believe people aren't downloading it." I just figured that with all of their dealings with Napster, they'd have all of their songs on this search list.
Alrhtough, I guess the site does say that they had only checked 50-100 subpoenas, so maybe the other ~900 contain all the Metallica songs.
Just because a chip has a higher sampling rate does not mean it sounds better. You are correct to say that a sound file sampled at a higher rate has the potential to be of higher quality. However, if the conversion from digital to analog is not done properly (i.e. in-exact impedence, bad response, poor leveling, etc.) the sound coming out of the chip still will not sound good.
This is what I don't understand: If there are so many people who feel this way about people using cellphones while driving, why the hell are there still people that do it? I live in Boston, as does one of the other repliers here, and I have to say that it is much worse than he said. I would say that at least a quarter of the cars I pass during the day, if not more, are driven by people talking on cellphones. I commute about two miles to school, and I typically do it by bike. It's the scariest thing I've ever seen. These people are crazy. They don't look, they don't signal, and they get pissed if you yell, flip the bird, or sometimes even just look at them.
Alright, sorry, rant over. I just wish there were some way to make people stop. (and, yes, I know that many people complain the same way about bikers that I do about people on cellphones - I just make sure that I am not one of the crazy ones)
I completely agree with your curly braces statement. The company I'm working at now specifically states in their "Coding Guidelines" that all loops - normal, empty, one-line - should have braces (also all if statements, try/catch blocks/etc.). This is mainly to allow for easy changes later. You don't end up with the random errors that come in to play when you change
while(something) do something;
into
while(something) do something; and do something else;//oops
rather than
while(something) { do something; and do something else; }
Admittedly, this is something that most programmers get used to finding fairly quickly (or even completely avoiding), but the braces already being there are nice.
BTW, the classes in software development at MIT recommend the same thing (putting braces in all loops/if statements/etc.). Just because I have no problem with specifically mentioning MIT, but doubt the company I'm working for wants me to use their name everywhere.:)
Sorry, but in response to all of you complaining about being "unable to play without FSAA" - am I the only one who is looking forward to HL2 for the gameplay? i thought the original HL was awesome because the gameplay rocked - the weapons were great, the enemies were cool, and the environment was excellent. I've been looking forward to someone creating similar work. (and, no, I haven't played Halo, Deus Ex, or whatever the other one is that people typically cite for these qualities, so I can't say that it hasn't already been done)
Hey - does anyone have a good link for the comparison of performance of the Cray machines to each other, to other computers of the time, and to modern day stuff? I once saw a graph that had "the computing power timeline" on it with both a super computer and personal computer trail, but I can't seem to find it again.
All this talk about GIMP needing CMYK support, and I haven't heard anyone say, "GIMP needs vector graphic support." That's what I'm waiting for. I want to be able to change color/size/font/fill/etc. of a line/textbox/shape/etc. _after_ I've placed it. If GIMP can do this, please, someone, tell me how! This is the only reason I keep Windows around - is so I have access to Paint Shop Pro and Macromedia Fireworks (sorry, I got that one before Photoshop and just never switched).
Alternatively, is there any graphics program for linux that does support a vector format? I currently use xfig all the time, but it's really only good for flow charts and schematics. And if there isn't an alternative, why isn't there?
This is what I see as the difference between paying someone who has been trained in programming, and someone who has picked up programming. A program written by either will work, but of course the one from the trained guy will work better and will be easier to update.
Unfortunately, we currently live in an age where most of our software does not really use the full potential of our hardware (ok, maybe that's not unfortunate, but we're there). This means that in terms of running software, most people will not be able to see any difference between a well written program and a poorly written one.
So, now we're down to just management of software. Here is where I think the problem lies. Well designed, well implemented code is a breeze to update (in most cases). Poorly written software is a pain in the ass. This means you have to compare two new ideas of cost.
The well-designed system is going to cost a lot up-front. Well-trained developers are not cheap, and a well designed program cannot be developed quickly (if you include design time - once it's designed, development can go fairly smoothly). This means that you are going to have to have a large capital to hire your programmers, and then survive for a few months/years until your system is ready and can start making money. Once this happens, in theory your company is all set. Assuming you've found your niche and marketed well, people will be using your software instead of someone else's because it's well designed, and you are releasing updates quickly to fix problems along the way, and it's easy to set up, and it's easy to use, and on and on.
Unfortunately, there is the other type of software development, which has been used, is used, and will most likely continue to be used, which is the exact opposite. It's called "doing it quick and dirty". As stated before, today any machine will be able to run the code you write - no matter how poor. So, in order to "get rich quick" a company will hire a bunch of cheap (untrained) programmers, rush through development, and put a piece of shi...I mean software on the market. This requires much less capital, and starts paying off very quickly. Users will probably even buy this program instead of the well designed one because it's ready now and it's cheap. The problems for this company will start within a couple of months when many bugs are found and cannot be fixed quickly, or in a couple of years when new features are desired and are difficult to implement.
So, why does the second version seem to be chosen most often? No - it's not just because of the startup cost. It's for the same reason that Linux has to "fight" Windows for market share. Windows got into the home PC market first, everyone bought it, and now they're used to it. Probably one of the biggest issues of technology today. People as a mass generally resist change. So, if you get your crappy program out there and people get used to it, they are much less likely to switch to the better implementation if it does not look/act/taste/smell/feel/quack the same.
So, where does all of this lead to? I have no f-ing clue. I would like to believe that companies that do it "quick and dirty" will get wailed on when version 2.0 comes out from the well-designed company. But, more than likely, they won't. They'll just do the same thing over again, and create a quick and dirty 2.0 that seems to do what people want. Unfortunately, I'm not really an economist, so I can't say much about where the line of diminishing returns might be in this strategy. But, from history, it seems like if a company can make "enough", then they'll be around for quite a while (look at Microsoft, Ford, VHS - all companies/technologies that have had their successors, and yet still survive).
Anyway, sorry for thinking aloud, but I hope that either I've presented some valid points, or that someone can correct my invalid ones so I can look at this situation correctly.
Sweet - I can't wait for opening night to see how many people are waiting in line with laptops watching 1 and 2 on DVD, timed just perfectly to start with 3 right afterward. Mmmmm...that's definately going to be one night of total loss of other productivity.:)
1. no one goes to a conference about vacuum cleaners or washing machines, because we all understand them.
Actually, people do go to conferences about vacuum cleaners and washing machines. Those of the latter variety are held all the time by GE/Whirlpool/Maytag/etc. to show off their latest models to appliance dealers.
3. People go to boat fairs, car shows, and consumer electronics to oogle at the latest and greatest.
And you think people didn't go to Linuxtag for the same reason? I would say you are sorely mistaken, if so.
I don't know about how Neilsen checks internet traffic - I'm too lazy to go and weed thru their site. But, I know when they do TV analysis, they actually put a cable box in the home that monitors what channel is being watched, and sends that information back to their system. Now, if the same setup exists for their net traffic analysis, then people know their being watched. And, with the recent cases in which providers have turned over information about subscribers who are sharing files, I'd sure as hell stop using my Neilsen-monitor net connection to trade files for fear that they'd turn me in! So of course Neilsen thinks less people are sharing!
Slashdot Mirror
Who do you ever get an e-mail from that is nothing more than an IMG tag? That's definately my number one spam-blocking rule: if it has an attachment, or is extremely small, and I don't recognize the address, delete it. If someone has something important to tell me, they send it in text, not as a picture with no other message content.
I have only one point of contention with your statements. Are you sure that 1c/mail is enough to make spamming non-economical? I mean, before the advent of e-mail (and even since), I received several spam snail mail messages per day at (I assume) the rate of 32c/mail (well, it was probably 20-some-odd cents then, but it continues in this 34?...37?...I don't know environment). I would like to agree that charging for spam would render it useless, but when compared to physical spam, I question the idea.
If you would argue that I am wrong, why? Is it simply that even 1c/mail would cut down _enough_ on spamming (since it wouldn't be free, there would have to be some limit on the number of mails a spammer could send) that the target audience is not large enough to ensure a high enough probability that someone will buy the product?
Perhaps there is a hidden idea here, in that if a spammer had to pay, then that would be an actual link back to them by which they could be punished for their violations of spam codes. I think there are different problems with this entirely, but it does seem like the case.
There is nothing worse than the possibility that an ISP will filter out a real email in their spam system.
;P
Absolutely! I'm working at a company in a foreign city this summer. For the first week I was here, I was unable to check my home e-mail (due to the company's firewall). So, left with only my corporate account, I attempted to write my family/girlfriend from that. The entire week, I got nothing back from my girlfriend. Luckily, being the tech-conscious person I am, I naturaly assumed that it was the coporate mail server blocking everything from Hotmail. I was later proven correct, but for the week before I regained access to my home e-mail I assumed that I was in the dog house for something.
Dude - TEAM 17?! Those mofo's ROCK! I got addicted on the original worms, and I believe I've played every one since. ...although I'm looking around their site, and I think I've been out of the loop for a while... oops.
The closest comparison I can find to a Apple Xserve in sun's product line would be a 1u V210 which lists for $5,795.00.
I believe you failed to notice the "1u" in the parent. His point was that Sun does make a machine of ~= power in a ~= size.
While I completely agree that the parent to your post is a moron, but just to answer one of your questions:
You must keep dumping water in the boiler to keep the metal of the boiler from deforming. It's like leaving a pot on the stove - it will eventually blacken/deform.
And, yes, it is true that the coal fires "must" be kept burning at a certain temperature. It is a lot more wasteful (time/money/coal) to stop and start one of these fires than it is to leave it going. (Quotes around must because one always *could* put out the fire and restart it, it's just inefficient.)
Great article! I just wish he hadn't contradicted himself at the end.
Oh, and when you write them, WRITE IN ALL CAPS.
Considering he had just argued earlier about how his editor had not been able to grok the paragraph that was written in all caps in his article, this wouldn't be very effective.
And, before you just flame the hell out of me, yes, I know he was just trying to make a joke.
Dude - I have to say that I think this is just exactly what is needed today. While it's fairly easy to learn some common graphics/input API today (Java's Swing, GTK, etc.), these can also be daunting when trying to do something like a game. A simple system like this would be great for getting newbies to learn the ins and outs of a system. Yes, I know it will have its own API to learn, but I'm betting it will be something more like putPixel/getPixel/isButtonPressed than frame.getContentPane().getGraphics() or whatever.
...also, I plan on buying one, and I don't want to have only Tetris/Space Invaders/Mario along with my own creations to play on it. :)
I remember learning to program in BASIC on an IBM PC Jr. It was great! The darn thing even came with a book to teach you how to do it! (or, at least mine had a book - I was young, so my parents could have bought it as extra, and I wouldn't have known). Following that I found a guy who was big in to Apple Basic and Logo. More fun to be had.
But, the great thing about all that was - it was simple. There were no extra libraries to worry about, no difficult configuration (you friggin' booted to BASIC from a floppy), just a place to code and test.
Of course, I finally moved on to C, but that was way back in the days of DOS and Win 3.1. If I wanted to draw to the screen, I friggin' called the monitor interrupt to change video modes, and set the memory at 0xA00000...(wow, it's been a while - whatever that number was). Still "simple", although a great next step - after learning the idea of "programming", I learned something about the actual structure of a computer.
Basically (sorry for the pun), I think it will be great for newbie programmers to be able to get their hands on some simple hardware to just goof around with. It will be easier for them to learn more difficult stuff if they can relate to something they already know.
By the way, I'm also really excited that this project includes Andre LaMothe. "Teach Yourself Programming in 21 Days" was an awesome book (and the first place I ran in to assembly). The guy really does a great job of explaining things.
Finally, I have to say that I also hope people really work at games for this machine. I think it will be very interesting. Of course the first months of its release will be Tetris/Space Invaders/Mario clones, but I have a feeling that if someone with a little bit of game know-how got into developing something for it, there could be a rather interesting game released. Sometimes restrictions (i.e. on hardware abilities) produce wonderful things. (I wish I could properly form the analogy to classical music (even though I'm leary of arguing by analogy here), but I can't remember the names of movements/composers/styles to do it.)
Actually, a friend and I were talking a few years back about a similar idea. This was back when "molecular gates" were the new big thing (basically physical gates made up of only a few molecules). We figured that in a few years, when they finally got the technology working well, the new fad would be animated tatoos. You would just implant the thing in the skin, and it would move around different colors of ink to animate the thing. The only thing we figured was that it would probably have to have a slow frame rate, as about the only clock possible was the beating of the heart.
:)
Maybe someday, the lady will dance by herself, instead of only when the forearm flexes.
(Also, my appologies if the friend was still hoping to capitalize on this idea.)
What does this survey count ?
IT looks like they forgot ARM half a billion units, or Motorola and IBM increased sales of G[345] procs.
RTFA!
Mercury's numbers include so-called x86 processors shipped for inclusion in desktops, notebooks, servers and Xboxes.
Why would someone use Solaris instead of Linux? How about the fact that Linux is not fully UNIX compliant, while Solaris is, and the original slashdot article linked to this here.
You may think "so what?" but you probably haven't realized that the software [many of] these servers are running is specifically designed to run on UNIX, and not necessarily compatible with Linux.
First, thanks for posting a text version of this list! Second, anyone else find it strange that Metallica is not on the list? I haven't listened to their new St. Anger album yet, so I can't say, "It's great, I can't believe people aren't downloading it." I just figured that with all of their dealings with Napster, they'd have all of their songs on this search list. Alrhtough, I guess the site does say that they had only checked 50-100 subpoenas, so maybe the other ~900 contain all the Metallica songs.
Just because a chip has a higher sampling rate does not mean it sounds better. You are correct to say that a sound file sampled at a higher rate has the potential to be of higher quality. However, if the conversion from digital to analog is not done properly (i.e. in-exact impedence, bad response, poor leveling, etc.) the sound coming out of the chip still will not sound good.
This is what I don't understand: If there are so many people who feel this way about people using cellphones while driving, why the hell are there still people that do it? I live in Boston, as does one of the other repliers here, and I have to say that it is much worse than he said. I would say that at least a quarter of the cars I pass during the day, if not more, are driven by people talking on cellphones. I commute about two miles to school, and I typically do it by bike. It's the scariest thing I've ever seen. These people are crazy. They don't look, they don't signal, and they get pissed if you yell, flip the bird, or sometimes even just look at them.
Alright, sorry, rant over. I just wish there were some way to make people stop. (and, yes, I know that many people complain the same way about bikers that I do about people on cellphones - I just make sure that I am not one of the crazy ones)
into
rather than
Admittedly, this is something that most programmers get used to finding fairly quickly (or even completely avoiding), but the braces already being there are nice.
BTW, the classes in software development at MIT recommend the same thing (putting braces in all loops/if statements/etc.). Just because I have no problem with specifically mentioning MIT, but doubt the company I'm working for wants me to use their name everywhere.
Sorry, but in response to all of you complaining about being "unable to play without FSAA" - am I the only one who is looking forward to HL2 for the gameplay? i thought the original HL was awesome because the gameplay rocked - the weapons were great, the enemies were cool, and the environment was excellent. I've been looking forward to someone creating similar work. (and, no, I haven't played Halo, Deus Ex, or whatever the other one is that people typically cite for these qualities, so I can't say that it hasn't already been done)
Hey - does anyone have a good link for the comparison of performance of the Cray machines to each other, to other computers of the time, and to modern day stuff? I once saw a graph that had "the computing power timeline" on it with both a super computer and personal computer trail, but I can't seem to find it again.
That's amazing! Thanks.
Y'all clearly just need to learn LaTeX. Screw this WYSIWYG shit! ;)
All this talk about GIMP needing CMYK support, and I haven't heard anyone say, "GIMP needs vector graphic support." That's what I'm waiting for. I want to be able to change color/size/font/fill/etc. of a line/textbox/shape/etc. _after_ I've placed it. If GIMP can do this, please, someone, tell me how! This is the only reason I keep Windows around - is so I have access to Paint Shop Pro and Macromedia Fireworks (sorry, I got that one before Photoshop and just never switched).
Alternatively, is there any graphics program for linux that does support a vector format? I currently use xfig all the time, but it's really only good for flow charts and schematics. And if there isn't an alternative, why isn't there?
This is what I see as the difference between paying someone who has been trained in programming, and someone who has picked up programming. A program written by either will work, but of course the one from the trained guy will work better and will be easier to update.
Unfortunately, we currently live in an age where most of our software does not really use the full potential of our hardware (ok, maybe that's not unfortunate, but we're there). This means that in terms of running software, most people will not be able to see any difference between a well written program and a poorly written one.
So, now we're down to just management of software. Here is where I think the problem lies. Well designed, well implemented code is a breeze to update (in most cases). Poorly written software is a pain in the ass. This means you have to compare two new ideas of cost.
The well-designed system is going to cost a lot up-front. Well-trained developers are not cheap, and a well designed program cannot be developed quickly (if you include design time - once it's designed, development can go fairly smoothly). This means that you are going to have to have a large capital to hire your programmers, and then survive for a few months/years until your system is ready and can start making money. Once this happens, in theory your company is all set. Assuming you've found your niche and marketed well, people will be using your software instead of someone else's because it's well designed, and you are releasing updates quickly to fix problems along the way, and it's easy to set up, and it's easy to use, and on and on.
Unfortunately, there is the other type of software development, which has been used, is used, and will most likely continue to be used, which is the exact opposite. It's called "doing it quick and dirty". As stated before, today any machine will be able to run the code you write - no matter how poor. So, in order to "get rich quick" a company will hire a bunch of cheap (untrained) programmers, rush through development, and put a piece of shi...I mean software on the market. This requires much less capital, and starts paying off very quickly. Users will probably even buy this program instead of the well designed one because it's ready now and it's cheap. The problems for this company will start within a couple of months when many bugs are found and cannot be fixed quickly, or in a couple of years when new features are desired and are difficult to implement.
So, why does the second version seem to be chosen most often? No - it's not just because of the startup cost. It's for the same reason that Linux has to "fight" Windows for market share. Windows got into the home PC market first, everyone bought it, and now they're used to it. Probably one of the biggest issues of technology today. People as a mass generally resist change. So, if you get your crappy program out there and people get used to it, they are much less likely to switch to the better implementation if it does not look/act/taste/smell/feel/quack the same.
So, where does all of this lead to? I have no f-ing clue. I would like to believe that companies that do it "quick and dirty" will get wailed on when version 2.0 comes out from the well-designed company. But, more than likely, they won't. They'll just do the same thing over again, and create a quick and dirty 2.0 that seems to do what people want. Unfortunately, I'm not really an economist, so I can't say much about where the line of diminishing returns might be in this strategy. But, from history, it seems like if a company can make "enough", then they'll be around for quite a while (look at Microsoft, Ford, VHS - all companies/technologies that have had their successors, and yet still survive).
Anyway, sorry for thinking aloud, but I hope that either I've presented some valid points, or that someone can correct my invalid ones so I can look at this situation correctly.
Sweet - I can't wait for opening night to see how many people are waiting in line with laptops watching 1 and 2 on DVD, timed just perfectly to start with 3 right afterward. Mmmmm...that's definately going to be one night of total loss of other productivity. :)
Definately the former in reference to the grammar
1. no one goes to a conference about vacuum cleaners or washing machines, because we all understand them.
Actually, people do go to conferences about vacuum cleaners and washing machines. Those of the latter variety are held all the time by GE/Whirlpool/Maytag/etc. to show off their latest models to appliance dealers.
3. People go to boat fairs, car shows, and consumer electronics to oogle at the latest and greatest.
And you think people didn't go to Linuxtag for the same reason? I would say you are sorely mistaken, if so.
I don't know about how Neilsen checks internet traffic - I'm too lazy to go and weed thru their site. But, I know when they do TV analysis, they actually put a cable box in the home that monitors what channel is being watched, and sends that information back to their system. Now, if the same setup exists for their net traffic analysis, then people know their being watched. And, with the recent cases in which providers have turned over information about subscribers who are sharing files, I'd sure as hell stop using my Neilsen-monitor net connection to trade files for fear that they'd turn me in! So of course Neilsen thinks less people are sharing!