Oggs take up more processing power, which means that they drain more power on portables = less battery life. MP3s and AACs (prefered), are less complicated algorythms, which means that, yes, they're a little larger, but they drain much less battery power when in use. I can't find a link just now to back up this counter-claim, but I am positive that Ogg Vorbis is "asymmetric"; it takes up more cpu time while *encoding*, but actually *less* cpu time while *decoding*. Given how most music is "WORM"-type access, and usually encoded on your power machine and played back on your embedded device/sonos/etc, this makes sense. MP3 (and WMA), on the other hand, are symmetrical; they require equal amount of cpu time for encoding and decoding.
These are all good responses! (I answered yours sort of at random.)
Thank you all for your serious and enlightening answers. It's true that I'm not a USian, so I do lack a certain amount of understanding of the details, but even so I've learned a great deal, especially about the weaknesses of such a system. I had no idea there were independents and smaller parties, what a shame it seems to be so futile.
Thanks for explaining!
Mind you, proportional representation is not without its quirks, either: In Denmark it works sort of okay. We end up with perhaps 15 parties who then need to work out together how to come up with a majority headcount to form a government. This often has the consequence that the party you voted for ends up supporting decisions you would not. (Compromise (n): when everyone is equally dissatisfied with the result.) Fun fact: the right-wing party is called "Left" (because they did a political 180 an astonishingly long time ago). Also, apart from the party name, all parties are identified by a letter which for the most part have nothing in common with the name, thereby making it rather confusing for inexperienced voters. Italy, by the way, has multiple layers of proportional representation which makes it really, _really_ hard to develop any sort of tactic if you'd like to vote for an underdog.
If a botnet controller were to wander off, the zombies would still carry the software, and would still be able to be controlled. (It is/was a common tactic to build up a botnet that did nothing until a certain point in time.)
I believe that what botnets do when not tended to varies a great deal. Some surely do some form of monitoring/spamming, while others may lie dormant, doing nothing.
[I realize this is totally off-topic to the actual articl, but maybe not so much to this thread of posts.]
In all seriousness, what would it take to create a _third_ party in the US, if one wanted to run for office but did wanted to be associated with neither Democrats nor Republicans? Would that even be possible under US law? (Or why not?)
I mean, aside from the considerable cash required for any political campaign (under any system, in any country); assume one has enough cash to burn.
I've long been annoyed with having to skip over commercials in what I "tape" on my (Pioneer) HD recorder. My next recorder is surely going to be a real computer rather than a traditional commercial product.
I wonder: do MythTV-based players also enforce the "do not skip" segments, or does it have a more consumer-friendly approach?
If it does, I wonder if it would be a legal risk zone to do this to "patent-encumbered ad blocks" (if it can be called that).
In all seriousness, there has been much progress on the warp drive front. In 1926 or so, theories claimed that you needed many times the energy of the universe to create a warp field, and your craft had to be a good deal lighter than zero mass.
The latest benchmark is from cirka 1986, I think, and claims only 2-3 times the energy of our local sun... and your craft only needs to be very little lighter than zero mass, or maybe it was acually zero.
But the warp field won't make a positive impression on those in the lane next to you, or the little old lady on the sidewalk...;)
What how you let people sign out says about you
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Giving users an "easy way out" is important; it builds trust by showing respect up front. Letting people know they can get rid of something lowers the resistance to try it.
How would you like to try a roller coaster that seemed like it could be a lot of fun, except you couldn't see where (if!?) people were supposed to get off afterwards.
Users will feel safer trying to install a program if they know it will uninstall cleanly, or at least be easily removable (as in: programs that live solely in their install directory).
The same goes for (business) relationships. If you sign up for anything at Fog Creek or Dreamhost, there is a prominent button saying, essentially, "I want out, and don't ever bother me again." Conversely, with most phone or insurance companies, even figuring out where to ask is a challenge. What kind of impression would you like to make on your company's potential customers?
If the police are following the rules, they would have nothing to hide, would they? That is a very interesting point -- not least in light of the popularity of the government's "if you have nothing to hide, we're sure you won't mind us monitoring your every move" argumentation. Tit for tat, one might say.
Yes I do, but the "brightness" control seem to be broken. It's dumb no matter how I set the control.
(Yes that's an old joke, but so fitting I just had to. Also, they say that television is a medium because anything well done is rare. I'll shut up now.)
I have one of those 'ingenious' 8-in-1 remote controls where you can use a rather large lcd to program the exact buttons you actually use (tv, hdr, stereo, squeezebox, roomba).
It's nice and all, it even has a backlight -- but I need it, because it's kinda hard to hit that button three rows up and to across without looking at it.
That was my very first thought too: if this is for military use anyway, then quit dicking around with making antennas and get busy on those sabers already!;)
...and it can reduce congestion. So _that's_ what the odd smell on the back seat is...!
Sorry, couldn't resist. I think this is a neat idea. They just need to add some form of IP protocol for traffic control (but I've ranted about that before...).
This means that while it is perfectly possible in theory for soldiers to charge batteries by running around, they will have to exert that extra energy themselves. Not true! All you gotta do is, give the troops the kind of shoes I'm wearing to work today, and then carpet bomb (heh heh) the entire battle zone with bits of the same carpet we have here at the office. I tell you, I have plenty of power at my fingertips (zapouch), and I don't feel one bit tired. It even keeps me on my toes, one might say.
A very nice post, that. I don't mean any disrespect, but I'm sure in a precious few years it will appear as quaint and clueless as the underwater rifle that shoots glass pellets full of electricity (that Cap'n Nemo used to bring a'huntin'). For one thing, I'm not so sure we'll be using pins anymore at all. We'll see I guess.
Oh, and regarding your statement that
People will still take the extra power as an invitation to write bloated and slow code. So even though your palmtop will technically have more power than a current supercomputer, you won't do much more with it than with a current palmtop, and still won't match even the current desktop computers. I have to ask, have you read "The Hundred-Year Language"? According to him then yes, the code of the future will burn cycles like you wouldn't believe -- but it will be an extraordinarily nice language to write in. Probably haiku, or somesuch.
eventually the disparity between RAM and CPU will get so high that it will be entirely feasible to skip RAM completely, and run the programs off the hard drive and the CPU's L3 cache. (The disparity between CPU speed and RAM latency is _already_ as big as that between the 8088 in the IBM PC/XT and the hard drive it had.) I haven't checked that factoid, but it does sound astonishing. Then again, if your storage medium is a terabyte-sized flash drive, there already (well, soon) is no difference between the hand drive and your L3 storage. Shall we call it L4 perhaps, with L5 being the Interweb (v5.2.a.3)?
Well, actually, that's how 'wonder' is spelt auf Deutsch. Oh no it isn't. It's why I piped up in the first place... It's spelt "Wunder" with a normal u (that is, without umlaut) and, for completeness sake, also with a capital W (since it's a noun).
This discussion you're having reminds me very much of the thousands of paper balloon bombs that Japan sent across the ocean (to the US) during WWII. It's not very well known, but it's there if you look for it.
My concern has rarely been what I put online. It's what others put online about me that I can't control or remove. So true, so true. It mattered little that I guarded my (work) email address like a paranoid, when a "trusted" friend of mine sent a stupid joke email to me. And 70 other people. From Hotmail. (Oh, and our corp spam filter sucks, naturally.)
*takes off hat and takes a moment of silence, for privacy lost by the carelessness of others*
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These are all good responses! (I answered yours sort of at random.)
Thank you all for your serious and enlightening answers. It's true that I'm not a USian, so I do lack a certain amount of understanding of the details, but even so I've learned a great deal, especially about the weaknesses of such a system. I had no idea there were independents and smaller parties, what a shame it seems to be so futile.
Thanks for explaining!
Mind you, proportional representation is not without its quirks, either:
In Denmark it works sort of okay. We end up with perhaps 15 parties who then need to work out together how to come up with a majority headcount to form a government. This often has the consequence that the party you voted for ends up supporting decisions you would not. (Compromise (n): when everyone is equally dissatisfied with the result.)
Fun fact: the right-wing party is called "Left" (because they did a political 180 an astonishingly long time ago). Also, apart from the party name, all parties are identified by a letter which for the most part have nothing in common with the name, thereby making it rather confusing for inexperienced voters.
Italy, by the way, has multiple layers of proportional representation which makes it really, _really_ hard to develop any sort of tactic if you'd like to vote for an underdog.
If a botnet controller were to wander off, the zombies would still carry the software, and would still be able to be controlled. (It is/was a common tactic to build up a botnet that did nothing until a certain point in time.)
I believe that what botnets do when not tended to varies a great deal. Some surely do some form of monitoring/spamming, while others may lie dormant, doing nothing.
[I realize this is totally off-topic to the actual articl, but maybe not so much to this thread of posts.]
In all seriousness, what would it take to create a _third_ party in the US, if one wanted to run for office but did wanted to be associated with neither Democrats nor Republicans? Would that even be possible under US law? (Or why not?)
I mean, aside from the considerable cash required for any political campaign (under any system, in any country); assume one has enough cash to burn.
Just like my shiny new "HD Ready" tv, for which I will nonetheless need a separate set-top-box when HDTV is eventually rolled out in my country...
I've long been annoyed with having to skip over commercials in what I "tape" on my (Pioneer) HD recorder. My next recorder is surely going to be a real computer rather than a traditional commercial product.
I wonder: do MythTV-based players also enforce the "do not skip" segments, or does it have a more consumer-friendly approach?
If it does, I wonder if it would be a legal risk zone to do this to "patent-encumbered ad blocks" (if it can be called that).
In all seriousness, there has been much progress on the warp drive front. In 1926 or so, theories claimed that you needed many times the energy of the universe to create a warp field, and your craft had to be a good deal lighter than zero mass.
... and your craft only needs to be very little lighter than zero mass, or maybe it was acually zero.
;)
The latest benchmark is from cirka 1986, I think, and claims only 2-3 times the energy of our local sun
But the warp field won't make a positive impression on those in the lane next to you, or the little old lady on the sidewalk...
Giving users an "easy way out" is important; it builds trust by showing respect up front. Letting people know they can get rid of something lowers the resistance to try it.
How would you like to try a roller coaster that seemed like it could be a lot of fun, except you couldn't see where (if!?) people were supposed to get off afterwards.
Users will feel safer trying to install a program if they know it will uninstall cleanly, or at least be easily removable (as in: programs that live solely in their install directory).
The same goes for (business) relationships. If you sign up for anything at Fog Creek or Dreamhost, there is a prominent button saying, essentially, "I want out, and don't ever bother me again." Conversely, with most phone or insurance companies, even figuring out where to ask is a challenge. What kind of impression would you like to make on your company's potential customers?
So, what's the last word on OpenMoko development?
Yes I do, but the "brightness" control seem to be broken. It's dumb no matter how I set the control.So... you don't watch television, then?
(Yes that's an old joke, but so fitting I just had to. Also, they say that television is a medium because anything well done is rare. I'll shut up now.)
In defense, let me state that the syntax "!=" is not really proper grammar. Many of us can read it because we know C (or some variant).
Oh, and even thought this is "News for Nerds", Nerd != Programmer, so there.
Perhaps "=/=" would be a better ascii representation of the correct symbol?
True, that.
I have one of those 'ingenious' 8-in-1 remote controls where you can use a rather large lcd to program the exact buttons you actually use (tv, hdr, stereo, squeezebox, roomba).
It's nice and all, it even has a backlight -- but I need it, because it's kinda hard to hit that button three rows up and to across without looking at it.
Maybe they should make a remote-control-size version of the DX1?
DX1 --> http://www.thinkgeek.com/computing/input/77ba/
iYour iSpell iChecker ihas ia(n?) iBug. iCan iyou ispot iit?
That was my very first thought too: if this is for military use anyway, then quit dicking around with making antennas and get busy on those sabers already! ;)
...and it can reduce congestion. So _that's_ what the odd smell on the back seat is...!Sorry, couldn't resist. I think this is a neat idea. They just need to add some form of IP protocol for traffic control (but I've ranted about that before...).
What an in-character comment from a poster with a sig like that. :p
Granted, it's been a while since I read Prey, but I recall nothing about cameras. Swarms, yes. Miniature, yes: nanoscale. But cameras? Hmm.
Scary book nonetheless, though.
Oh, and regarding your statement that People will still take the extra power as an invitation to write bloated and slow code. So even though your palmtop will technically have more power than a current supercomputer, you won't do much more with it than with a current palmtop, and still won't match even the current desktop computers. I have to ask, have you read "The Hundred-Year Language"? According to him then yes, the code of the future will burn cycles like you wouldn't believe -- but it will be an extraordinarily nice language to write in. Probably haiku, or somesuch. eventually the disparity between RAM and CPU will get so high that it will be entirely feasible to skip RAM completely, and run the programs off the hard drive and the CPU's L3 cache. (The disparity between CPU speed and RAM latency is _already_ as big as that between the 8088 in the IBM PC/XT and the hard drive it had.) I haven't checked that factoid, but it does sound astonishing. Then again, if your storage medium is a terabyte-sized flash drive, there already (well, soon) is no difference between the hand drive and your L3 storage. Shall we call it L4 perhaps, with L5 being the Interweb (v5.2.a.3)?
This discussion you're having reminds me very much of the thousands of paper balloon bombs that Japan sent across the ocean (to the US) during WWII. It's not very well known, but it's there if you look for it.
It's fine trying to sound suave and all, but it kinda breaks the illusion when you mix in "röckdöts". Or maybe, just maybe, that wasn't on purpose?
No need to dream up examples from wikipedia ... just check out the url to the patent!
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?patentnumber=7,287,042
But if the patent examiners don't even look _that_ far... *rolleyes*...
*takes off hat and takes a moment of silence, for privacy lost by the carelessness of others*