Hmmm, your extrapolation is in error. Saving a one byte document will only tell you the minimum block size for a file on the disk. If your one byte document (Word or otherwise) requires 19 kb on your disk, you will also find that a 18 kb document will require 19 kb of storage. The Word format does require massive amounts of overhead compared to ASCII but within reason, any Word document from 1 byte to 19 kb will require the same amount of storage. Now, if you were to reformat your drive to use a smaller block size, you could store smaller files more efficiently at the sacrifice of total usable storage capacity (and of course there is a system limitation of how many blocks or sectors the file system and OS can track -- I don't know what limits NTFS has personally).
Not to disagree that Word (any version) wastes tons of storage space with all of the garbage the format stores but it's not a 19 kb to 1 ratio between Word and ASCII (probably more like 20 to 1 average).
Seems like a fairly precise number...wonder how they derived it? And if true, for $1,000,000 that works out to be just over $8,000 per participant (assuming the proceeds were/are shared equally). Hardly seems worth the risk. On the other hand, the article says (indirectly) that it took 15 months to decide a heist was in progress. Heh, as they say "Patience is a virtue".
I am a layman on string theory, as well as on General and Special Relativity, Quantum Theory, etc., etc., etc. (like no doubt 99.999999% of the people on the planet). Still, I enjoy reading about it and generally do hear about any new ideas out there.
If I remember right, the basic eureka moment behind string theory came from the realization that a zero dimensional object (a point) cannot physically exist in our multi-dimensional universe. A lot of special relativity math, taken to its extreme, requires this zero dimensional object. Is the idea that a physical object must retain all of the dimensions of our physical universe (however many that may be) in order to be "in" our universe correct? I don't know (and no one else on the planet knows for sure either I believe). Can a physical object in our universe somehow lose one or more dimensions? As far as I know, that is unknown too.
What I find interesting is that we think we know we are made of solid matter yet we also know that all matter is ultimately made of the three primary forces of our universe we have discovered (weak, strong, and electromagnetic) and "solid" matter is really simply a collection of these forces that tend to stay in the same place for a while and interact in specific ways with other collections of the three primary forces.
And before anyone say "What about gravity?, Einstein says gravity is the result of mass (the three primary forces) interacting with the spacetime continuum (whatever that is). In other words you are not made of a force called gravity, your interaction with spacetime manifests itself as a force we call gravity. But, hey, who knows maybe the three primary forces are also the result of something else interacting with spacetime. By the time we're done, we'll have reduced the universe to a single something that sits there and dreams of different states of itself and thereby the universe is manifested.
Truthfully, no one knows SCO's real motivations except SCO (and maybe not even them). It should make a good movie someday. However, it's widely accepted by most Linux fans that SCO expected IBM to settle early on and was shocked when IBM decided to fight. IBM, the general speculation also believes, felt it would be best in the long run to eliminate any doubt as to whether Linux infringes on UNIX/SCO/Novell copyright or not. And I must add they've done an admirable job of crushing both that idea as well as SCO. In fact, the net result of the lawsuit has been to make Linux practically untouchable as far as copyrights are concerned. The community should be grateful to SCO for the lawsuit. Personally, I'd like to see Windows go through the same ordeal. I'd be willing to bet a small fortune that Windows wouldn't be found nearly as squeeky clean as Linux has been.
Actually, big difference. At home I can choose not to be connected to the internet. I can choose to use open source software and be reasonably sure that there are no persons looking over my shoulder while I type, so to speak. I can store seriously sensitive information encrypted. I can store seriously sensitive information offline (i.e. not on the hard drive of the computer). I can separate access to different types of data by not keeping all my information in the same place. I can use different computers for different things. There's so much different about hardware and software you control verses what someone else controls that it would take weeks to list it all. An online, remote software service is inherently much less secure, and much less private, than one that is offline or local.
Right now I have Time-Warner Cable TV (note: TWC is being taken over by Comcast). Used to have DirecTV in New Jersey, moved to Houston, TX, and decided to try TWC since they had their new DVR functionality.
In a word, TWC DVR's suck big time, especially compared to Tivo. The first units (we have two, both made by Scientific Atlantic) crashed frequently. When they weren't crashing, the sound would be frequently out of sync with the picture of a records show. After two weeks of that, we took the units back and got their newer, HDTV compatible models. The crashing is better (they've only crashed once in two weeks) but the recording is still bad. When recording two shows at the same time it is almost guaranteed that one will be messed up.
The worst thing (seriously, worse that the above) is that there is no search feature. None. You can browse, meaning you can page through list after list, and you can sort by channel or alphabetically by the name of the show, but that's it. With Tivo, you can create keyword searched, actor name searches, category searches, etc., and search out for about one month ahead. Without the ability to search and program recordings days or weeks before they are scheduled to air, the DVR is almost worthless.
Needless to say, I am switching back to DirecTV so that I can get my Tivo back. Because of my experience with TWC, I would have a great deal of skepticism about anyone else's so called DVR. Simply the ability to record a show to hard disk does not make a DVR.
Remember, anything on someone else's server is destined to become public knowledge. It may be inadvertent, it may be because of a court order, a government investigation, a rogue employee, or because someone hacks the server. In the future world of software as a service, where your personal data is stored on someone else's computer, the privacy of that data is only as good as the technical, legal, and political environment makes it. For the US, as recent months have proven, that means there is no privacy you can count on. So be sure you never write about your questionable deductions on your income tax, or your recent affair in the Bahamas, or how you managed to carry banned items on your last airplane trip, or anything else you wouldn't want public, when using this service.
Darl isn't listed as a major holder, so either he sold out long ago (over two years), he owns stock indirectly through third parties, or he doesn't own enough to be listed as a major holder.
However, I believe the $2.30 figure comes from the closing price on the day the lawsuit was officially filed. And it began it's stratospheric climb about two months later.
Actually, checking Yahoo, the last insider transaction was a non-public aquisition by Darcy Mott for 51,020 shares (for $3.92 per share, so it's lost almost half it's value). Nothing majorly going on with the stock, really, except Baystar Capital was dumping their's as fast as the SEC would allow at the end of 2004. Wonder how Baystar feels about their "investment" now?
Not to pick on poor ole SCO (just kidding, let's pick on em) but it's worse than that...back on March 14, 2002, they did a reverse stock split, 1 for 4, because the stock was doing so poorly. So, in fact a share would only be 57 cents today if it were not for that reverse split.
A close of $2.28 means the stock has lost about 98% of it's value over the last 7 years.
Of course, there's nothing stopping Quest from charging more or less to the different ISPs using the Quest DSL backbone, based on throughput. Where does it all end?
I agree. And that is why freedom of speech is so important. This country was founded on protest. The right to speak out against stupid laws, or stupid government, is a right that every American should routinely exercise. And that is why any kind of domestic spying is so fundamentally wrong.
It's been a while since we have had a real issue to protest about in America. American citizens has gotten way too passive. I hear of people who say they are willing to give up their constitutional rights (a little bit here and there) if the Government will just protect them. It's time for us to return to our roots. We are the Government. Either we protect ourselves or we lose our freedom.
Actually, this is the fundamental difference between the US and many many other countries. No individual is the Government in the US, including the President. That is the difference between rule by law and rule by men. The people make the law (via elected officials), not the President. The President is required to uphold the law. And he cannot ignore the law. The Presidency has certain powers granted by the supreme law of the US (the constitution) but making new laws is not one of them, only Congress can do that. Do we have all of the possible situations worked out in the law? No. But if the President breaks the law as determined by Congress and The Supreme Court then he will (probably) be impeached. However, the first step is to have oversight. Right now, Glorious Leader contends that Congress cannot even question his actions. Newsflash. That's completely wrong. The President does not have the authority to say Congress cannot judge whether his actions are legal or not. It is just a matter of time before we find out what's going on.
I agree it is a matter of degree. However, when the White House decides to bypass Congress, FISC, and even their own Justice Department because they think they will be told it is illegal, it's likely that it is illegal. In this case, don't ask don't tell is not a defendable policy.
That's the meaning of rule by law. If we pass a law then we (are suppose to) abide by it. If we don't like the law, we work to change the law. In rare cases individuals protest a bad law by ignoring it or breaking it. But the Government does not have that luxury (the Government cannot ignore the law).
Slashdot Mirror
Hmmm, your extrapolation is in error. Saving a one byte document will only tell you the minimum block size for a file on the disk. If your one byte document (Word or otherwise) requires 19 kb on your disk, you will also find that a 18 kb document will require 19 kb of storage. The Word format does require massive amounts of overhead compared to ASCII but within reason, any Word document from 1 byte to 19 kb will require the same amount of storage. Now, if you were to reformat your drive to use a smaller block size, you could store smaller files more efficiently at the sacrifice of total usable storage capacity (and of course there is a system limitation of how many blocks or sectors the file system and OS can track -- I don't know what limits NTFS has personally).
Not to disagree that Word (any version) wastes tons of storage space with all of the garbage the format stores but it's not a 19 kb to 1 ratio between Word and ASCII (probably more like 20 to 1 average).
Seems like a fairly precise number...wonder how they derived it? And if true, for $1,000,000 that works out to be just over $8,000 per participant (assuming the proceeds were/are shared equally). Hardly seems worth the risk. On the other hand, the article says (indirectly) that it took 15 months to decide a heist was in progress. Heh, as they say "Patience is a virtue".
Ah, that makes it all worthwhile...
Nice write-up.
I am a layman on string theory, as well as on General and Special Relativity, Quantum Theory, etc., etc., etc. (like no doubt 99.999999% of the people on the planet). Still, I enjoy reading about it and generally do hear about any new ideas out there.
If I remember right, the basic eureka moment behind string theory came from the realization that a zero dimensional object (a point) cannot physically exist in our multi-dimensional universe. A lot of special relativity math, taken to its extreme, requires this zero dimensional object. Is the idea that a physical object must retain all of the dimensions of our physical universe (however many that may be) in order to be "in" our universe correct? I don't know (and no one else on the planet knows for sure either I believe). Can a physical object in our universe somehow lose one or more dimensions? As far as I know, that is unknown too.
What I find interesting is that we think we know we are made of solid matter yet we also know that all matter is ultimately made of the three primary forces of our universe we have discovered (weak, strong, and electromagnetic) and "solid" matter is really simply a collection of these forces that tend to stay in the same place for a while and interact in specific ways with other collections of the three primary forces.
And before anyone say "What about gravity?, Einstein says gravity is the result of mass (the three primary forces) interacting with the spacetime continuum (whatever that is). In other words you are not made of a force called gravity, your interaction with spacetime manifests itself as a force we call gravity. But, hey, who knows maybe the three primary forces are also the result of something else interacting with spacetime. By the time we're done, we'll have reduced the universe to a single something that sits there and dreams of different states of itself and thereby the universe is manifested.
So, is that Eastern Standard Time?
"Windows has encountered an error from which it cannot recover and needs to restart. Please press any key to continue..."
Actually, it's because the reliability was measured based on the number of dropped taps while secretly listening in on the public's wireless calls...
Truthfully, no one knows SCO's real motivations except SCO (and maybe not even them). It should make a good movie someday. However, it's widely accepted by most Linux fans that SCO expected IBM to settle early on and was shocked when IBM decided to fight. IBM, the general speculation also believes, felt it would be best in the long run to eliminate any doubt as to whether Linux infringes on UNIX/SCO/Novell copyright or not. And I must add they've done an admirable job of crushing both that idea as well as SCO. In fact, the net result of the lawsuit has been to make Linux practically untouchable as far as copyrights are concerned. The community should be grateful to SCO for the lawsuit. Personally, I'd like to see Windows go through the same ordeal. I'd be willing to bet a small fortune that Windows wouldn't be found nearly as squeeky clean as Linux has been.
Actually, big difference. At home I can choose not to be connected to the internet. I can choose to use open source software and be reasonably sure that there are no persons looking over my shoulder while I type, so to speak. I can store seriously sensitive information encrypted. I can store seriously sensitive information offline (i.e. not on the hard drive of the computer). I can separate access to different types of data by not keeping all my information in the same place. I can use different computers for different things. There's so much different about hardware and software you control verses what someone else controls that it would take weeks to list it all. An online, remote software service is inherently much less secure, and much less private, than one that is offline or local.
Right now I have Time-Warner Cable TV (note: TWC is being taken over by Comcast). Used to have DirecTV in New Jersey, moved to Houston, TX, and decided to try TWC since they had their new DVR functionality.
In a word, TWC DVR's suck big time, especially compared to Tivo. The first units (we have two, both made by Scientific Atlantic) crashed frequently. When they weren't crashing, the sound would be frequently out of sync with the picture of a records show. After two weeks of that, we took the units back and got their newer, HDTV compatible models. The crashing is better (they've only crashed once in two weeks) but the recording is still bad. When recording two shows at the same time it is almost guaranteed that one will be messed up.
The worst thing (seriously, worse that the above) is that there is no search feature. None. You can browse, meaning you can page through list after list, and you can sort by channel or alphabetically by the name of the show, but that's it. With Tivo, you can create keyword searched, actor name searches, category searches, etc., and search out for about one month ahead. Without the ability to search and program recordings days or weeks before they are scheduled to air, the DVR is almost worthless.
Needless to say, I am switching back to DirecTV so that I can get my Tivo back. Because of my experience with TWC, I would have a great deal of skepticism about anyone else's so called DVR. Simply the ability to record a show to hard disk does not make a DVR.
Remember, anything on someone else's server is destined to become public knowledge. It may be inadvertent, it may be because of a court order, a government investigation, a rogue employee, or because someone hacks the server. In the future world of software as a service, where your personal data is stored on someone else's computer, the privacy of that data is only as good as the technical, legal, and political environment makes it. For the US, as recent months have proven, that means there is no privacy you can count on. So be sure you never write about your questionable deductions on your income tax, or your recent affair in the Bahamas, or how you managed to carry banned items on your last airplane trip, or anything else you wouldn't want public, when using this service.
Hmmm...maybe IBM should invest in SCO so as to keep them afloat for a while?
Darl isn't listed as a major holder, so either he sold out long ago (over two years), he owns stock indirectly through third parties, or he doesn't own enough to be listed as a major holder.
However, I believe the $2.30 figure comes from the closing price on the day the lawsuit was officially filed. And it began it's stratospheric climb about two months later.
I believe you are correct. Lowest close was at $0.60 on June 26, 2002.
Actually, checking Yahoo, the last insider transaction was a non-public aquisition by Darcy Mott for 51,020 shares (for $3.92 per share, so it's lost almost half it's value). Nothing majorly going on with the stock, really, except Baystar Capital was dumping their's as fast as the SEC would allow at the end of 2004. Wonder how Baystar feels about their "investment" now?
Excellent point. The solution? Distribute freely and as widely as possible.
Not to pick on poor ole SCO (just kidding, let's pick on em) but it's worse than that...back on March 14, 2002, they did a reverse stock split, 1 for 4, because the stock was doing so poorly. So, in fact a share would only be 57 cents today if it were not for that reverse split.
A close of $2.28 means the stock has lost about 98% of it's value over the last 7 years.
...updated daily.
Of course, there's nothing stopping Quest from charging more or less to the different ISPs using the Quest DSL backbone, based on throughput. Where does it all end?
I agree. And that is why freedom of speech is so important. This country was founded on protest. The right to speak out against stupid laws, or stupid government, is a right that every American should routinely exercise. And that is why any kind of domestic spying is so fundamentally wrong.
It's been a while since we have had a real issue to protest about in America. American citizens has gotten way too passive. I hear of people who say they are willing to give up their constitutional rights (a little bit here and there) if the Government will just protect them. It's time for us to return to our roots. We are the Government. Either we protect ourselves or we lose our freedom.
Actually, this is the fundamental difference between the US and many many other countries. No individual is the Government in the US, including the President. That is the difference between rule by law and rule by men. The people make the law (via elected officials), not the President. The President is required to uphold the law. And he cannot ignore the law. The Presidency has certain powers granted by the supreme law of the US (the constitution) but making new laws is not one of them, only Congress can do that. Do we have all of the possible situations worked out in the law? No. But if the President breaks the law as determined by Congress and The Supreme Court then he will (probably) be impeached. However, the first step is to have oversight. Right now, Glorious Leader contends that Congress cannot even question his actions. Newsflash. That's completely wrong. The President does not have the authority to say Congress cannot judge whether his actions are legal or not. It is just a matter of time before we find out what's going on.
I agree it is a matter of degree. However, when the White House decides to bypass Congress, FISC, and even their own Justice Department because they think they will be told it is illegal, it's likely that it is illegal. In this case, don't ask don't tell is not a defendable policy.
Thanks for the correction...
What I meant to say is "It's not OK for any White House administration to use your phone contacts to estimate your opinion of their energy policy."
That's the meaning of rule by law. If we pass a law then we (are suppose to) abide by it. If we don't like the law, we work to change the law. In rare cases individuals protest a bad law by ignoring it or breaking it. But the Government does not have that luxury (the Government cannot ignore the law).
And, by the way, America is not an empire.