The signals, however weak can still be useful, but that depends on the technology being used for data transmission too. Spread spectrum communications can make use of terribly weak signals in noisy environments and still extract useful information. Can someone provide data on the kind of communication system being employed on the Voyager?
The blurb says that they have 120,000 books that can be searched by text. This means that they have digitized all of them - and that is 110,000 more books than what Project Gutenberg has managed to achieve. Pretty impressive work in such a short duration of time - since each book has an electronic entry, plus a scanned page for display!
You can only browse two pages forward or backward if you end up on a page. This prevents you from reading the entire book online - unless of course, by some accident of fate, your search result returns every fifth page:-)
I usually get all my textbooks for India. The books are published by the same publishers, and the paper quality is the same, with the only difference being that the books are paperbacks. It's really not a big difference to me considering the fact that the books are lighter and I'll probably not use them after a couple of semesters anyway.
The difference in cost? An engineering textbook costs at least $100 in the campus bookstore - the same textbook never costs more than $7 in India.
Oh, and by the way, all the textbooks that I use here are available over there:-). I wonder why publishers never give people a softcover option out here!
The patent on allowances might be stupid, but the way our laws are framed, there's no other option. Do you really want some other company to patent a stupid thing and then ask you to *licence* it from them? See how Amazon patented the 'one-click shopping' and 'people-who-bought-this-also...' stuff. The 'one-click' patent is downright stupid since it is the most obvious thing for any programmer who has used cookies.
Anyway, my point is that even if a concept is silly, it is imperative to patent it before someone else patents it since fighting a case in court to prove prior-art might end up being a costlier affair.
For all the posts here that say that if PCs with windows cannot be shipped, people will start using Linux - that's not really true.
I use linux regularly at the university and I'm a great lover of all the stuff that one can do with linux, but I also realize that linux is not the OS that the average john Q can use. For all it's shortcomings, windows is an amazingly easy operating system to use. The only OS which probably does a better job is OSX which unfortunately is not available for x86 machines.
True, Linux has tools like openoffice, IM clients like gaim, media tools and stuff, but as any user can testify, many things require the use of the command prompt and stuff that geeks find so simple, but is not very obvious for the average person. So until linux gets to be as user friendly as Windows/OSX, let's not think of it as an alternative to these OSes.
I dont see what you are talking about. I tried searching for 'epson printer driver' and I got pages and pages of driver related stuff. Of course, if you search for 'printer' or something like that, u may get the kind of stuff you described. Most of the time, it's about creating the right search query.
Yahoo does provide a linux client but it is nowhere as good as the windows version. The linux client always gives problems on RH 9 (not sure about other distros) where incoming messages cannot be seen. Also, if you are a gaim user, you know that an all-in-client with so many plugins just cannot be beaten by having to startup multiple programs for all the protocols out there.
Sm thng s trw wth lphbts wth no vwls. It dsn't hlp to hv tww wys of shwg vwls lk wth sbstt cnsnts nd lttl sgns thwgh whch ld to dblg wf th sllbles!! Ask 'im up there!
It disturbs me that people talk about killing as if it is a perfectly normal thing like brushing your teeth. Admittedly the military has to kill people, but the fact that we are civilized should probably mean that we should never lose sight of the fact that it is a gory thing, all reasons notwithstanding. Maybe it's just me, but yes, I'm disturbed.
well, actually it is not such a big news in india since they've been using EVMs for years now for state elections. All the election commission has said now is that in the next national elections EVMs will be the sole method. It's just a tiny piece of news and certainly no attention grabber there since EVMs are pretty common out there.
get real... trolling isn't going to make you great.. and you shouldn't feel so insecure about your own society that you have to trash other societies. I've lived in both and I know that both are perfectly nice places with perfectly nice people. There's really no point in Americans trashing Indian society or vice versa. Okay now back to the story.
oops, my comment was meant for don't understand the Indians. They have more people living in poverty than there are people in the US, yet they build nukes and spend tons of money so they can live on the bleeding edge of [insert thing here].
the same reason why americans went to the moon -
1. because you can do it
2. you do not stop living just because poverty is a problem. Poverty is always a problem in every society. While poverty is being tackled should an entire nation stop investing in technology and stuff used to enable one to "live on the bleeding edge of.."?
3. I don't want this to be a troll, but your question is plain silly and condescending.
True, this is the end of election night coverage. I've seen the machines being used when I was in india (more than a year ago) and when elections were conducted in Kerala (and other places), the machines would be collected and brought to a central place and the results would be on television in a few hours. The anticipation and debates have to be real quick now.
all your arguments are valid, but your main point is flawed - people do not have to pay for the card - the card is free and the government spends $ 0.75 (or whatever is the amount) for the card. I was in India when my family and I got the card, so I know for a fact that it is free. There are other problems though - for a population of such magnitude, logistics is the biggest troublemaker. People sometimes get wrong cards or cards with wrong information, which then have to be changed, which is a huge hassle both for the public and the people who manage the system. However, I believe that within a few years, after one election with these mandatory cards, things will stabilize and the logistics problem will be minimized.
From a technology point of view, it's a great effort since the entire system from the photography set (for the id cards) to the software is indegenous and is a great testbed for technology since things are being applied at such a massive scale.
In a country where the people have little power or voice..
are you talking about india? I'm an indian, but that's not the reason I'm saying this - no government is capable of taking unilateral decisions in India - people have too much power.. It's true that sometimes politics takes precedence over rationality and bad decisions take place, but it's certainly not due to lack of power for the citizens.
" Maybe they have smaller cubicles? Maybe they don't air-condition their buildings for their workers. Yes... "
No,
Companies like Infosys and Wipro have offices that would put any american company to shame. Infosys has the second biggest campus in the world after Microsoft's richmond one and take it from someone who's been there, seen that.. it's damn impressive! They have to keep the programmers comfortable since there is always another company dangling money in front of these programmers to take them away. From swanky offices to built in gyms and swimming pools and golf courses (yes, they have golf courses in office campuses in bangalore), they are the exact opposite of sweatshops. So get your facts straight before you shoot off.
well the problem is, you cannot pay the same salaries in india as you do in america for the simple reason that the PPP(purchasing power parity) is different. $60k in the US means a lot (and I mean a lot) less than 60k multiplied by the exchange rate (around 45 rupees per dollar). So $60k is an obscene amount in india for a programming job since you just don't need that much to have the same lifestyle that you expect as a techie. And it's all about the lifestyle. Every company decides the remuneration based on the lifestyle it can provide, so companies in san jose,california pay more for the same job than say, companies in phoenix, arizona. Similarly, to get the same lifestyle in india, all you need is something around $8-10k.
Slashdot Mirror
The signals, however weak can still be useful, but that depends on the technology being used for data transmission too. Spread spectrum communications can make use of terribly weak signals in noisy environments and still extract useful information. Can someone provide data on the kind of communication system being employed on the Voyager?
The blurb says that they have 120,000 books that can be searched by text. This means that they have digitized all of them - and that is 110,000 more books than what Project Gutenberg has managed to achieve. Pretty impressive work in such a short duration of time - since each book has an electronic entry, plus a scanned page for display!
You can only browse two pages forward or backward if you end up on a page. This prevents you from reading the entire book online - unless of course, by some accident of fate, your search result returns every fifth page :-)
or check out www.fabmart.com
I usually get all my textbooks for India. The books are published by the same publishers, and the paper quality is the same, with the only difference being that the books are paperbacks. It's really not a big difference to me considering the fact that the books are lighter and I'll probably not use them after a couple of semesters anyway. :-). I wonder why publishers never give people a softcover option out here!
The difference in cost? An engineering textbook costs at least $100 in the campus bookstore - the same textbook never costs more than $7 in India.
Oh, and by the way, all the textbooks that I use here are available over there
The patent on allowances might be stupid, but the way our laws are framed, there's no other option. Do you really want some other company to patent a stupid thing and then ask you to *licence* it from them? See how Amazon patented the 'one-click shopping' and 'people-who-bought-this-also...' stuff. The 'one-click' patent is downright stupid since it is the most obvious thing for any programmer who has used cookies.
Anyway, my point is that even if a concept is silly, it is imperative to patent it before someone else patents it since fighting a case in court to prove prior-art might end up being a costlier affair.
For the lorry-ignorant, it is a bigger version of a truck. It usually has the same chassis as a bus, so that gives you some idea of the size.
For all the posts here that say that if PCs with windows cannot be shipped, people will start using Linux - that's not really true. I use linux regularly at the university and I'm a great lover of all the stuff that one can do with linux, but I also realize that linux is not the OS that the average john Q can use. For all it's shortcomings, windows is an amazingly easy operating system to use. The only OS which probably does a better job is OSX which unfortunately is not available for x86 machines. True, Linux has tools like openoffice, IM clients like gaim, media tools and stuff, but as any user can testify, many things require the use of the command prompt and stuff that geeks find so simple, but is not very obvious for the average person. So until linux gets to be as user friendly as Windows/OSX, let's not think of it as an alternative to these OSes.
I dont see what you are talking about. I tried searching for 'epson printer driver' and I got pages and pages of driver related stuff. Of course, if you search for 'printer' or something like that, u may get the kind of stuff you described. Most of the time, it's about creating the right search query.
Yahoo does provide a linux client but it is nowhere as good as the windows version. The linux client always gives problems on RH 9 (not sure about other distros) where incoming messages cannot be seen.
Also, if you are a gaim user, you know that an all-in-client with so many plugins just cannot be beaten by having to startup multiple programs for all the protocols out there.
as noted in some other post, it is possible to dump malicious scripts using the verisign link. For ex, try to navigate to verisign using this link
Sm thng s trw wth lphbts wth no vwls. It dsn't hlp to hv tww wys of shwg
vwls lk wth sbstt cnsnts nd lttl sgns thwgh whch ld to dblg wf th sllbles!!
Ask 'im up there!
umm... but no train has ever been hijacked there till now.. don't give anyone ideas :-)
It disturbs me that people talk about killing as if it is a perfectly normal thing like brushing your teeth. Admittedly the military has to kill people, but the fact that we are civilized should probably mean that we should never lose sight of the fact that it is a gory thing, all reasons notwithstanding. Maybe it's just me, but yes, I'm disturbed.
anand... don't be a dumb fuck! as an indian I am offended that you are trying to insult someone's country using india as a comparison. Grow up!
cheers, I have no illusions about having the 'best medicine and education'.. precisely why I am studying in the US, and not in India :-)
well, actually it is not such a big news in india since they've been using EVMs for years now for state elections. All the election commission has said now is that in the next national elections EVMs will be the sole method. It's just a tiny piece of news and certainly no attention grabber there since EVMs are pretty common out there.
get real... trolling isn't going to make you great.. and you shouldn't feel so insecure about your own society that you have to trash other societies. I've lived in both and I know that both are perfectly nice places with perfectly nice people. There's really no point in Americans trashing Indian society or vice versa. Okay now back to the story.
oops, my comment was meant for
don't understand the Indians. They have more people living in poverty than there are people in the US, yet they build nukes and spend tons of money so they can live on the bleeding edge of [insert thing here].
the same reason why americans went to the moon - 1. because you can do it 2. you do not stop living just because poverty is a problem. Poverty is always a problem in every society. While poverty is being tackled should an entire nation stop investing in technology and stuff used to enable one to "live on the bleeding edge of.."? 3. I don't want this to be a troll, but your question is plain silly and condescending.
True, this is the end of election night coverage. I've seen the machines being used when I was in india (more than a year ago) and when elections were conducted in Kerala (and other places), the machines would be collected and brought to a central place and the results would be on television in a few hours. The anticipation and debates have to be real quick now.
all your arguments are valid, but your main point is flawed - people do not have to pay for the card - the card is free and the government spends $ 0.75 (or whatever is the amount) for the card. I was in India when my family and I got the card, so I know for a fact that it is free. There are other problems though - for a population of such magnitude, logistics is the biggest troublemaker. People sometimes get wrong cards or cards with wrong information, which then have to be changed, which is a huge hassle both for the public and the people who manage the system. However, I believe that within a few years, after one election with these mandatory cards, things will stabilize and the logistics problem will be minimized. From a technology point of view, it's a great effort since the entire system from the photography set (for the id cards) to the software is indegenous and is a great testbed for technology since things are being applied at such a massive scale.
In a country where the people have little power or voice..
are you talking about india? I'm an indian, but that's not the reason I'm saying this - no government is capable of taking unilateral decisions in India - people have too much power.. It's true that sometimes politics takes precedence over rationality and bad decisions take place, but it's certainly not due to lack of power for the citizens.
" Maybe they have smaller cubicles? Maybe they don't air-condition their buildings for their workers. Yes... "
No, Companies like Infosys and Wipro have offices that would put any american company to shame. Infosys has the second biggest campus in the world after Microsoft's richmond one and take it from someone who's been there, seen that.. it's damn impressive! They have to keep the programmers comfortable since there is always another company dangling money in front of these programmers to take them away. From swanky offices to built in gyms and swimming pools and golf courses (yes, they have golf courses in office campuses in bangalore), they are the exact opposite of sweatshops. So get your facts straight before you shoot off.
well the problem is, you cannot pay the same salaries in india as you do in america for the simple reason that the PPP(purchasing power parity) is different. $60k in the US means a lot (and I mean a lot) less than 60k multiplied by the exchange rate (around 45 rupees per dollar). So $60k is an obscene amount in india for a programming job since you just don't need that much to have the same lifestyle that you expect as a techie. And it's all about the lifestyle. Every company decides the remuneration based on the lifestyle it can provide, so companies in san jose,california pay more for the same job than say, companies in phoenix, arizona. Similarly, to get the same lifestyle in india, all you need is something around $8-10k.