You clearly haven't tried to use it for anything... It's mostly out of date and referencing old versions (5.x and 4.x). Drupal is a great codebase, but they change APIs far too often to allow the documentation to keep up.
If you ask for advice in the IRC chat or on the forums/groups, you'll just hear "buy and read the book and don't write anything else until you've read it".
So yeah, "The Book" is an invaluable resource, I'm sure, but I'm with an earlier poster that said this sort of information should be available in their documentation. Physical books on programming topics should be reserved for the teaching and techniques, not the only place to get a tutorial on the basics.
#1, even with a voltmeter you can't reliably predict battery life. With an alkaline AA battery, you could watch the voltage drop from 1.5V down to 1.1 and know that it was now dead - but with newer rechargeable batteries, the voltage doesn't drop until it's completely dead, so you can't easily guess how long it will take. The only way to do it would be to have the device keep a history of how long it is able to work before the battery dies completely and statistically predict future performance. As if they are going to waste time doing that!
#2 Yes, noise should be considered, but an exact signal to noise ratio isn't going to predict bandwidth or call quality, either. I'm pretty sure that the "signal" they measure is actually signal-to-noise anyway. But even just signal strength is still useful, since you can assume that noise isn't changing that much.
Gas gauges? How many people see that their car stays "full" for a long time and then drops sharply? Or says that it is empty when there's still a few gallons left? Mine will tell me "0 miles to empty" and drive for another 50 miles without coming close to empty. Speedometers? They can be off by 5 or 10% right from the factory. Really every gauge is inaccurate by some amount.
My guess is that companies make the gauges vague on purpose, so that people DON'T try to get too much (false/misleading) information out of them. If your cell phone can make a phone call with "2 bars" of signal, that is all the information you should be taking away from that measure. And if your battery says full for 2 days and drops sharply on day 3, you know that when it starts to drop it's time to charge it. That's all the information you need. Does anybody really think that consumers will be happy with a voltage display? I don't even know what voltage my phone operates at, let alone what the low-end of operating voltage will be.
I think you're confusing "reasonable prices" with "barely tolerable prices". Most cell providers charge between $10 and $15 a month for unlimited text messages - even to those users who already have an unlimited data plan!
Bits are bits, and they are all sent over the same network. Voice transmission requires low-latency and high bandwidth, and yet it's free or cheap on a per-byte basis. Nearly all plans have unlimited night, weekend, and mobile-to-mobile of some kind. Text messages on the other hand have NO latency requirement, are VERY low bandwidth, and don't even have guaranteed delivery. And yet per-byte they cost more than the NASA/govt pays for video from space vehicles.
"Microsoft still has three out of ten people running an old version of its browser..."
3/10 = 30%. So 70% are running the latest version.
"Firefox has converted more than half of its users to the latest version in just over a week."
55% of firefox users are running the latest version.
Unless I'm mistaken, 70% > 55%. The ONLY comparison you can make is that percentage. There isn't enough information there to make any other claims.
If we had numbers for how many people updated ie7 after a week, then maybe we could say something. But it's still not a fair comparison - Microsoft didn't have a "download ie7 to break a world record" day to inflate their percentages. If we wait 18 months to see how firefox does, THEN we can say something.
Good luck applying that "common law" to sharing MP3s. Almost nobody thinks it is wrong, but the law still prosecutes those that do it.
Not to mention downloading TV shows. People who pay for cable would be shocked to find that they are breaking the law if they download a recording of a show from a friend.
To extend on that analogy - it's not like the front door of your house, it's like the door of a business.
An advertised SSID is identifying an available service. Just like a sign that says "bookstore" or "Starbucks" advertises the service available inside.
When I walk up to the door of the starbucks, I pull on the handle. If it's locked, I assume it's closed and I leave. If it's open, I go inside. Same with a wifi access point. If they have an advertised SSID and don't set a password it's the same as putting up a business sign and having the door unlocked.
In fact, a number of companies use this exact business model for wireless. Starbucks, TMobile, etc.
1). Connect to a wireless network without explicit authorization 2). Open a web browser. 3). A web page displays asking for credit card payment or other credentials for use.
On an open network, you're already surfing google before you get to step 3. And if that is committing a crime, so is accessing starbucks wireless.
Email: interface is poor for a conversation, more designed for sharing an entire thought process, story, idea, etc. Delivery has inherent delay.
Telephone: Interrupts other activities. Requires immediate attention or dismissal. People both feel interrupted when receiving a call AND feel like they are bothering people when they call them.
In-person: Interrupts other activities, requires full attention.
Instant Messaging: Can be immediately responded to or delayed as dictated by what else is going on. You can do other things (like work) at the same time. You can look up information relative to the conversation before responding (like putting somebody on hold on the phone). You can start a conversation without feeling like you are interrupting them.
Basically, I don't like to call somebody unless I have something important or time-critical to say. IMs are a perfect way to keep in touch with somebody without impeding your work.
250GB is a lot for ONE person to download in a month...... I could be wrong, but I would guess that most Comcast cable connections are to houses and apartments with MORE THAN ONE person living in them!
With 6 people sharing cable, that impossible-to-reach 250GB turns into a paltry 42GB. Or about 1.4 gigs a day. It would be very easy to accidentally hit that if you watch videos online.
I hope that they plan to tiered service like cell phone companies. Ideally with automatic tiering - so rather than paying ridiculous overage charges per-GB, you just pay for the price of the next tier. (as in, up to 250GB is $X a month, 300GB is $X+$Y/month, etc)
Hot tip: although AA Li ion cells are too dangerous for "us" to use (if some idiot puts one in a regular AA charger, they explode. If they discharge too much, they explode) but China inc has no such qualms. If you look carefully you can find, in China, Li Ion cells in any size and shape. Even the $500 external mac laptop battery is, I think an $8 part insuide from China.
In China, they just label things with whatever brand or technology name will sell. Want an Energizer AA Lithium Rechargable? Sure, let me just whip a label up on my inkjet and slap it on this no name brand alkaline.
The problem with allowing it to auto-resize as well as be resized manually is that you now have two mechanisms "fighting". You resize it, then it auto-resizes on you, you manually resize it again, rinse, repeat. There needs to be a way for it to know "is it ok for me to auto-resize for you?".
Not saying the option shouldn't be there, just that it would need to be an option in a preferences screen rather than just a simple on-screen widget.
This study compares the number of RESETs to the total number of connections made. It makes NO ATTEMPT at determining if the resets are false and injected by the ISP.
That's what needs to happen. People were afraid to go with XM or Sirius because they are incompatible technologies (BluRay, HD anyone? VHS/Betamax?). We don't want to have a bunch of incompatible technologies because it will hurt technology development. We don't want to have just one company because it will be a monopoly.
My suggestion: Force all the satellite radio companies to use the same technology. They can either buy time on a satellite or launch their own, but they have to all agree on one format. They can charge whatever they want, and the competition between networks can keep prices down. The fact that they are all compatible means that you can switch from one to the other if you want to. Hardware manufacturers can just make ONE satellite radio that will work with all of the different providers. So now cars that want to have built-in satellite aren't tied to one company.
WHAT ip addresses? This article gives NO information about the attack, doesn't mention any of the sites that were compromised, doesn't say what information is being sent or anything.
...the Turing test will be limited to controlling avatars in a virtual world--probably Second Life. Both the synthetic character and his human doppelganger will be operating different avatars. If the human-operators can't tell who the RPI synthetic character is, then it passes the Turing test...
Seriously? Their turing test is on an online game?
This isn't a reasonable test. The way people converse online is MUCH different from how they converse directly. I suspect most of the users on a game like that would fail the turing test. "LOLWTFBBQ! oh hai! pwned!"
I'm all about meeting people in non-traditional ways, but I don't want to meet somebody who is desperate enough to pay for a dating service, nor do I want to become that desperate.
OKCupid is good stuff. It's actually fun just browsing around on there, and it does an impressive job of matching people up, despite the fact that the questions are user-submitted.
So now when my computer goes off the deep end with memory leaks and a bogged cpu and I start rampantly septuple-clicking things while frustratingly waiting for them to start......the computer will take it upon itself to load ANOTHER program that is somehow going to make it better?
A company already tried that one. Blue Frog maintained a list of "do not spam" email addresses. Every time a user got a spam message, it would go to the websites being spammed and submit all the web forms with "do not spam me" spam, linking back to bluefrog. Basically a DDOS. There was a lot of backlash for that one and bluefrog is no longer in the anti-spam crusade business.
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By posting User Content to any part of the Site, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to the Company an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, publicly perform, publicly display, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part) and distribute such User Content for any purpose on or in connection with the Site or the promotion thereof, to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, such User Content, and to grant and authorize sublicenses of the foregoing.
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Forget when they decide to post about your activities online - their terms and conditions clearly state that if they want to, they can take that photo that you posted of you under a beer funnel at a frat party and sell it to anybody they want. You might end up in a TV commercial and receive no notice, compensation, or even acknowledgment. If you write something interesting in a note, they can publish it and collect profits from it. Scary.
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Drupal does have great online documentation.
You clearly haven't tried to use it for anything... It's mostly out of date and referencing old versions (5.x and 4.x). Drupal is a great codebase, but they change APIs far too often to allow the documentation to keep up.
If you ask for advice in the IRC chat or on the forums/groups, you'll just hear "buy and read the book and don't write anything else until you've read it".
So yeah, "The Book" is an invaluable resource, I'm sure, but I'm with an earlier poster that said this sort of information should be available in their documentation. Physical books on programming topics should be reserved for the teaching and techniques, not the only place to get a tutorial on the basics.
You mean all you have to do is not be popular and make a profit?
Chances are the other clones weren't worth the hassle in trying to shut down (or weren't created in the US, and thus couldn't easily be shut down)
#1, even with a voltmeter you can't reliably predict battery life. With an alkaline AA battery, you could watch the voltage drop from 1.5V down to 1.1 and know that it was now dead - but with newer rechargeable batteries, the voltage doesn't drop until it's completely dead, so you can't easily guess how long it will take. The only way to do it would be to have the device keep a history of how long it is able to work before the battery dies completely and statistically predict future performance. As if they are going to waste time doing that!
#2 Yes, noise should be considered, but an exact signal to noise ratio isn't going to predict bandwidth or call quality, either. I'm pretty sure that the "signal" they measure is actually signal-to-noise anyway. But even just signal strength is still useful, since you can assume that noise isn't changing that much.
Gas gauges? How many people see that their car stays "full" for a long time and then drops sharply? Or says that it is empty when there's still a few gallons left? Mine will tell me "0 miles to empty" and drive for another 50 miles without coming close to empty. Speedometers? They can be off by 5 or 10% right from the factory. Really every gauge is inaccurate by some amount.
My guess is that companies make the gauges vague on purpose, so that people DON'T try to get too much (false/misleading) information out of them. If your cell phone can make a phone call with "2 bars" of signal, that is all the information you should be taking away from that measure. And if your battery says full for 2 days and drops sharply on day 3, you know that when it starts to drop it's time to charge it. That's all the information you need. Does anybody really think that consumers will be happy with a voltage display? I don't even know what voltage my phone operates at, let alone what the low-end of operating voltage will be.
I think you're confusing "reasonable prices" with "barely tolerable prices". Most cell providers charge between $10 and $15 a month for unlimited text messages - even to those users who already have an unlimited data plan!
Bits are bits, and they are all sent over the same network. Voice transmission requires low-latency and high bandwidth, and yet it's free or cheap on a per-byte basis. Nearly all plans have unlimited night, weekend, and mobile-to-mobile of some kind. Text messages on the other hand have NO latency requirement, are VERY low bandwidth, and don't even have guaranteed delivery. And yet per-byte they cost more than the NASA/govt pays for video from space vehicles.
"Microsoft still has three out of ten people running an old version of its browser..."
3/10 = 30%. So 70% are running the latest version.
"Firefox has converted more than half of its users to the latest version in just over a week."
55% of firefox users are running the latest version.
Unless I'm mistaken, 70% > 55%. The ONLY comparison you can make is that percentage. There isn't enough information there to make any other claims.
If we had numbers for how many people updated ie7 after a week, then maybe we could say something. But it's still not a fair comparison - Microsoft didn't have a "download ie7 to break a world record" day to inflate their percentages. If we wait 18 months to see how firefox does, THEN we can say something.
Good luck applying that "common law" to sharing MP3s. Almost nobody thinks it is wrong, but the law still prosecutes those that do it.
Not to mention downloading TV shows. People who pay for cable would be shocked to find that they are breaking the law if they download a recording of a show from a friend.
To extend on that analogy - it's not like the front door of your house, it's like the door of a business.
An advertised SSID is identifying an available service. Just like a sign that says "bookstore" or "Starbucks" advertises the service available inside.
When I walk up to the door of the starbucks, I pull on the handle. If it's locked, I assume it's closed and I leave. If it's open, I go inside. Same with a wifi access point. If they have an advertised SSID and don't set a password it's the same as putting up a business sign and having the door unlocked.
In fact, a number of companies use this exact business model for wireless. Starbucks, TMobile, etc.
1). Connect to a wireless network without explicit authorization
2). Open a web browser.
3). A web page displays asking for credit card payment or other credentials for use.
On an open network, you're already surfing google before you get to step 3. And if that is committing a crime, so is accessing starbucks wireless.
Take a look at the alternatives:
Email: interface is poor for a conversation, more designed for sharing an entire thought process, story, idea, etc. Delivery has inherent delay.
Telephone: Interrupts other activities. Requires immediate attention or dismissal. People both feel interrupted when receiving a call AND feel like they are bothering people when they call them.
In-person: Interrupts other activities, requires full attention.
Instant Messaging: Can be immediately responded to or delayed as dictated by what else is going on. You can do other things (like work) at the same time. You can look up information relative to the conversation before responding (like putting somebody on hold on the phone). You can start a conversation without feeling like you are interrupting them.
Basically, I don't like to call somebody unless I have something important or time-critical to say. IMs are a perfect way to keep in touch with somebody without impeding your work.
Not to mention the usage:
/dev/hda1 -t nina /dev/hda1
mount
fsck.nina
the joke goes on and on...
250GB is a lot for ONE person to download in a month...... I could be wrong, but I would guess that most Comcast cable connections are to houses and apartments with MORE THAN ONE person living in them!
With 6 people sharing cable, that impossible-to-reach 250GB turns into a paltry 42GB. Or about 1.4 gigs a day. It would be very easy to accidentally hit that if you watch videos online.
I hope that they plan to tiered service like cell phone companies. Ideally with automatic tiering - so rather than paying ridiculous overage charges per-GB, you just pay for the price of the next tier. (as in, up to 250GB is $X a month, 300GB is $X+$Y/month, etc)
It's kind of fun in a way. There will be two models: The cheap model for windows users, and the luxury model for linux users :-)
Hot tip: although AA Li ion cells are too dangerous for "us" to use (if some idiot puts one in a regular AA charger, they explode. If they discharge too much, they explode) but China inc has no such qualms. If you look carefully you can find, in China, Li Ion cells in any size and shape. Even the $500 external mac laptop battery is, I think an $8 part insuide from China.
In China, they just label things with whatever brand or technology name will sell. Want an Energizer AA Lithium Rechargable? Sure, let me just whip a label up on my inkjet and slap it on this no name brand alkaline.
The problem with allowing it to auto-resize as well as be resized manually is that you now have two mechanisms "fighting". You resize it, then it auto-resizes on you, you manually resize it again, rinse, repeat. There needs to be a way for it to know "is it ok for me to auto-resize for you?".
Not saying the option shouldn't be there, just that it would need to be an option in a preferences screen rather than just a simple on-screen widget.
This study compares the number of RESETs to the total number of connections made. It makes NO ATTEMPT at determining if the resets are false and injected by the ISP.
I had to re-read this article a few times. They can't be serious.... Dumping trash in the ocean and calling it a good thing??
That's what needs to happen. People were afraid to go with XM or Sirius because they are incompatible technologies (BluRay, HD anyone? VHS/Betamax?). We don't want to have a bunch of incompatible technologies because it will hurt technology development. We don't want to have just one company because it will be a monopoly.
My suggestion: Force all the satellite radio companies to use the same technology. They can either buy time on a satellite or launch their own, but they have to all agree on one format. They can charge whatever they want, and the competition between networks can keep prices down. The fact that they are all compatible means that you can switch from one to the other if you want to. Hardware manufacturers can just make ONE satellite radio that will work with all of the different providers. So now cars that want to have built-in satellite aren't tied to one company.
Or perhaps Cation
This was the information that should have been included in the article. A link to the McAfee Avert Labs Blog:
http://www.avertlabs.com/research/blog/index.php/2008/03/12/another-mass-attack-underway/
WHAT ip addresses? This article gives NO information about the attack, doesn't mention any of the sites that were compromised, doesn't say what information is being sent or anything.
It may as well have been just the headline.
...the Turing test will be limited to controlling avatars in a virtual world--probably Second Life. Both the synthetic character and his human doppelganger will be operating different avatars. If the human-operators can't tell who the RPI synthetic character is, then it passes the Turing test...
Seriously? Their turing test is on an online game?
This isn't a reasonable test. The way people converse online is MUCH different from how they converse directly. I suspect most of the users on a game like that would fail the turing test. "LOLWTFBBQ! oh hai! pwned!"
"Free" is the key to a successful dating site.
I'm all about meeting people in non-traditional ways, but I don't want to meet somebody who is desperate enough to pay for a dating service, nor do I want to become that desperate.
OKCupid is good stuff. It's actually fun just browsing around on there, and it does an impressive job of matching people up, despite the fact that the questions are user-submitted.
So now when my computer goes off the deep end with memory leaks and a bogged cpu and I start rampantly septuple-clicking things while frustratingly waiting for them to start......the computer will take it upon itself to load ANOTHER program that is somehow going to make it better?
I can't walk through an airport with a trenchcoat lined with batteries and claim that "All tech men carry batteries"?
A company already tried that one. Blue Frog maintained a list of "do not spam" email addresses. Every time a user got a spam message, it would go to the websites being spammed and submit all the web forms with "do not spam me" spam, linking back to bluefrog. Basically a DDOS. There was a lot of backlash for that one and bluefrog is no longer in the anti-spam crusade business.
When you post User Content to the Site, you authorize and direct us to make such copies thereof as we deem necessary in order to facilitate the posting and storage of the User Content on the Site.
By posting User Content to any part of the Site, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to the Company an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to use, copy, publicly perform, publicly display, reformat, translate, excerpt (in whole or in part) and distribute such User Content for any purpose on or in connection with the Site or the promotion thereof, to prepare derivative works of, or incorporate into other works, such User Content, and to grant and authorize sublicenses of the foregoing.
You may remove your User Content from the Site at any time. If you choose to remove your User Content, the license granted above will automatically expire, however you acknowledge that the Company may retain archived copies of your User Content.
Forget when they decide to post about your activities online - their terms and conditions clearly state that if they want to, they can take that photo that you posted of you under a beer funnel at a frat party and sell it to anybody they want. You might end up in a TV commercial and receive no notice, compensation, or even acknowledgment. If you write something interesting in a note, they can publish it and collect profits from it. Scary.