Funny that caching wasn't mentioned at all in TFA. It'd be good to see more use of BitTorrent at the ISP level to distribute videos around. That way, you could stream with high reliability from your ISP and they only pay for the download once.
Obviously they can't do this with illegal content, but there's plenty of scope to get everyone else on board - from the TV networks to San Fernando's finest!
You can get free TV listings for Australia (and a bunch of other countries) at XMLTV. Haven't used it myself so I'm not sure about accuracy, but it is free.
...or it is ignored. I find it amazing that after a decade on the web, publishers haven't worked out that nobody links to content that you can't get to without a subscription. So if you write something interesting you lose the network effect of all the search engines, news agregators and bloggers who link to the article (and all the advertising around it).
Wholesale copying and republishing of content is a copyright violation and always has been. That's not what Google are doing. How could you possibly be upset with people who drive traffic your way?
This has got to be close to the record. Hotmail support in Outlook Express been in beta for the best part of a decade. I reported the bug where it downloads duplicates of messages 7 *years* ago! The (automatic) response? This product is in beta (so don't expect us to do anything about it). Microsoft clearly use the term "beta" to free themselves from the obligation of product support.
Ever been to the Austrian Alps? Think ski lifts stretching to the horizon in every direction, hot Austrian babes, great beer and 13th century villages that you ski into for lunch. It's a *nice* place!
Also, there's a good chance the residents were born there. You often can't buy real estate in those tiny villages, it's just passed down the generations. I doubt they just moved in and started whinging.
So I say let them have their mirrors. It's nowhere near as expensive (and environmentally suspect) as air conditioning Las Vegas for example.
Btw, anyone got any good links to palces to buy music from artists who aren't signed with the record companies? I'm defintiely interested in buying from the artists themselves.
There needs to be a distinction drawn between regular geothermal power from volcanic areas (such as Iceland, NZ, Yellowstone etc) and hot dry rock geothermal power which is what Geodynamics are pursuing.
HDR Geothermal works by passing water through hot, fractured granite. The granite is hot because of the radioactive decay of trace elements in the granite (too low in concentration for any radioactive waste concerns). A thick layer of sediment above the granite effectively creates a heat blanket, allowing the temperature to build to 200-300 hundred degrees C - ideal for heating water without building up extreme pressure.
I'm not a geologist, but I imagine that problems with pipe scaling would be much lower for HDR geothermal than in regular geothermal power, where you've got a lot of salts, sulphur and all sorts of muddy crap bubbling through. The water in HDR geothermal is kept in a closed loop so there's no waste to dispose of. The heat is extracted via a heat exchanger which boils a more volatile fluid such as ammonia and this fluid is used for the power generation. So you've got no impurities going through your generation facility.
Geodynamics say they have enough heat to power Australia at current levels of consumption for 70 years. Unlike solar or wind, the power is constant and can be ramped up or down at will. I'm surprised this has been off everyone's radar for so long.
I think needing a page to be indexed by search engines should be a clear indication of when not to use AJAX. Applications like web mail, checkout processes and interactive maps don't need to be indexed, and they're significantly more usable if you can avoid refreshing the browser every time something changes.
IMHO best practice should be to keep the static content of these apps (eg. help screens, terms and conditions, privacy policies etc) as regular, indexable HTML whilst using AJAX where the user experience is interactive.
I'm guessing the highest point of the journey isn't where people are getting off, so in that regard it's just like going up and down in a pressurised plane and makes sense.
As far as altitude sickness goes, the faster the pressure changes, the higher the likelyhood of problems. So if, say, the train depressurised at it's highest point you'd have a lot of trouble without supplimental oxygen. Over several days most fit people can adjust to breathing at 17,000 feet unassisted. It's a sobering thought that base camp for climbing Everest is about this high. You then have to climb another 10,000ft. Read "Into Thin Air" by Jon Krakauer for the full horror show. Amazing book.
As far as the bends go, I don't think you can get them ascending from sea level. But you definately could if you'd been diving for even a short time before going up there.
Nuclear war was fairly easy to avoid. We just had to keep our rather careless fingers off the button. However, the end of oil is a certainty and the race to produce viable alternatives is running a fair way behind. What's the alternative to jet fuel for example?
I share your belief in human resilience, but there's a big test coming for the industrialised world when oil starts running out. To paraphrase the Chinese curse - there are interesting times ahead.
Yes, I should have been clearer. Because Skype already has AES encryption, I'd expect to see eBay get some heat from the US Govt to either remove it completely, replace it with something much weaker or impose some form of key escrow. If Skype wasn't owned by a US company, they'd effectively be able to ignore this.
When Skype was a European company, they could have just ignored this nonsense. Not any more. The problem is, Skype really needs encryption as it's peer-peer. It'll be interesting to see how eBay deal with it.
If you just want to try clustering out, try using virtual machine software such as VMWare Workstation. Every VM instance you run is a node in your cluster.
I've used VMWare very successfully to test a site which was to be hosted on physically load balanced servers. We needed to know that if a node failed, or a user was redirected to another server in the cluster, that their session information would be retrievable without the need to logon again.
It worked perfectly. The other nice thing about using VMWare was we only needed to configure the one instance and then clone it. Just make sure you've got heaps of RAM and a fast processor. Dual or multi-core CPUs are even better.
Article misses the most important point
on
VoIP Going Wireless
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Wireless VoIP has been around for a while already. There are plenty of people running Skype on PDA's with WiFi and GSM/GPRS for example. What we *don't* have today is handoff between networks mid call. ie. If I start a call over VoIP and WiFi, it should seemlessly switch to the cellular network when I go out of range from the hotspot. Even better, the call should go peer-peer if I'm within range of the person I'm calling. It'd also be nice to know how far away they are and in which direction, but I digress.
Although the tech for seemless network handoff is tricky, I think the main issue to adoption is resistance from the cellular networks who stand to lose a fortune.
Sorry mate. You're dealing with the ever precious Apple fanboys. If ever a group took the "You're either with us or against us" credo to heart it's them. I notice you've already been modded Offtopic by one of them.
Here's the problem - when your users are a bunch of fawning sycophants they don't complain when you do the wrong thing - like enforcing a DRM monopoly on consumers. Pity.
Any word on whether they're going to release an iTrip Nano? I fell in love with the iTrip (FM transmitter) on a recent holiday where it worked beautifully in our hire car - lasting about 7 hours between charges.
The only problem I see for the Nano is that it's reduced size would make it less suitable to powering external gadgets like this. I think the Nano is stunning, but I'm happy I got my 6GB Mini for the brief time they were available.
Not trolling - what's your experience been with finding and/or recompiling drivers for x86_64 Linux? I just bought an Acer Ferrari 4000 laptop (awesome machine) which officially supports WinXP x64, so I've got that running fine but the lack of app support at the moment makes it kinda pointless. eg. I'm yet to find a full x64 J2EE Server on Windows.
I taught a programming course at an Australian government department where they had a "no unauthorised software" policy. Unfortunately, the language I was teaching wasn't on their list, so they wouldn't allow me to install it on the training room computers that weren't even connected to the office network!
Needless to say the course was less than effective and illustrates what should be the seventh dumbest idea - "Security policies have no effect on productivity". The amount of grief caused to companies by rigid, pedantic security nazis is astounding.
Hydrogen powered fuel cells and biodiesel are probably the best bet for land vehicles and boats.
High quality biodiesel is a good option for piston aircraft. Turbo diesel powered piston aircraft are very popular now in Europe and militaries the world over will drive adoption as it means they only need one type of fuel for their various vehicles. Avgas is getting rarer and much more expensive so expect to see a fairly smooth transition to diesel over the next 10-15 years.
Jets are a big problem. I don't think biodiesel is volatile enough to power a jet so that only leaves liquid hydrogen which requires much bigger tanks than current jets for the same amount of power.
Hot Dry Rock geothermal plants can produce constant, base load power in the 100's of megawatts and theoretically could scale to the gigawatt scale. An Australian company is currently building a demonstration plant in South Australia that could power the whole country at current levels of consumption for 70 years. Seems to me this is a much more promising area than fusion research.
Slashdot Mirror
Obviously they can't do this with illegal content, but there's plenty of scope to get everyone else on board - from the TV networks to San Fernando's finest!
...since King Canute tried to hold back the sea.
Sorry T-Mobile, the tide's a comin' in!
Enjoy this while you can!
You can get free TV listings for Australia (and a bunch of other countries) at XMLTV. Haven't used it myself so I'm not sure about accuracy, but it is free.
Just go to Vancouver sometime, there are Starbucks everywhere!
*ducks*
Wholesale copying and republishing of content is a copyright violation and always has been. That's not what Google are doing. How could you possibly be upset with people who drive traffic your way?
This has got to be close to the record. Hotmail support in Outlook Express been in beta for the best part of a decade. I reported the bug where it downloads duplicates of messages 7 *years* ago! The (automatic) response? This product is in beta (so don't expect us to do anything about it). Microsoft clearly use the term "beta" to free themselves from the obligation of product support.
Ever been to the Austrian Alps? Think ski lifts stretching to the horizon in every direction, hot Austrian babes, great beer and 13th century villages that you ski into for lunch. It's a *nice* place!
Also, there's a good chance the residents were born there. You often can't buy real estate in those tiny villages, it's just passed down the generations. I doubt they just moved in and started whinging.
So I say let them have their mirrors. It's nowhere near as expensive (and environmentally suspect) as air conditioning Las Vegas for example.
Absolutely. Check out CD Baby.
HDR Geothermal works by passing water through hot, fractured granite. The granite is hot because of the radioactive decay of trace elements in the granite (too low in concentration for any radioactive waste concerns). A thick layer of sediment above the granite effectively creates a heat blanket, allowing the temperature to build to 200-300 hundred degrees C - ideal for heating water without building up extreme pressure.
I'm not a geologist, but I imagine that problems with pipe scaling would be much lower for HDR geothermal than in regular geothermal power, where you've got a lot of salts, sulphur and all sorts of muddy crap bubbling through. The water in HDR geothermal is kept in a closed loop so there's no waste to dispose of. The heat is extracted via a heat exchanger which boils a more volatile fluid such as ammonia and this fluid is used for the power generation. So you've got no impurities going through your generation facility.
Geodynamics say they have enough heat to power Australia at current levels of consumption for 70 years. Unlike solar or wind, the power is constant and can be ramped up or down at will. I'm surprised this has been off everyone's radar for so long.
IMHO best practice should be to keep the static content of these apps (eg. help screens, terms and conditions, privacy policies etc) as regular, indexable HTML whilst using AJAX where the user experience is interactive.
I'm guessing the highest point of the journey isn't where people are getting off, so in that regard it's just like going up and down in a pressurised plane and makes sense.
As far as altitude sickness goes, the faster the pressure changes, the higher the likelyhood of problems. So if, say, the train depressurised at it's highest point you'd have a lot of trouble without supplimental oxygen. Over several days most fit people can adjust to breathing at 17,000 feet unassisted. It's a sobering thought that base camp for climbing Everest is about this high. You then have to climb another 10,000ft. Read "Into Thin Air" by Jon Krakauer for the full horror show. Amazing book.
As far as the bends go, I don't think you can get them ascending from sea level. But you definately could if you'd been diving for even a short time before going up there.
I share your belief in human resilience, but there's a big test coming for the industrialised world when oil starts running out. To paraphrase the Chinese curse - there are interesting times ahead.
Yes, I should have been clearer. Because Skype already has AES encryption, I'd expect to see eBay get some heat from the US Govt to either remove it completely, replace it with something much weaker or impose some form of key escrow. If Skype wasn't owned by a US company, they'd effectively be able to ignore this.
When Skype was a European company, they could have just ignored this nonsense. Not any more. The problem is, Skype really needs encryption as it's peer-peer. It'll be interesting to see how eBay deal with it.
I've used VMWare very successfully to test a site which was to be hosted on physically load balanced servers. We needed to know that if a node failed, or a user was redirected to another server in the cluster, that their session information would be retrievable without the need to logon again.
It worked perfectly. The other nice thing about using VMWare was we only needed to configure the one instance and then clone it. Just make sure you've got heaps of RAM and a fast processor. Dual or multi-core CPUs are even better.
Although the tech for seemless network handoff is tricky, I think the main issue to adoption is resistance from the cellular networks who stand to lose a fortune.
Current record to beat - 102,800ft set by Capt Joe Kittinger in a US Air Force experiment in 1960
Here's the problem - when your users are a bunch of fawning sycophants they don't complain when you do the wrong thing - like enforcing a DRM monopoly on consumers. Pity.
The only problem I see for the Nano is that it's reduced size would make it less suitable to powering external gadgets like this. I think the Nano is stunning, but I'm happy I got my 6GB Mini for the brief time they were available.
Not trolling - what's your experience been with finding and/or recompiling drivers for x86_64 Linux? I just bought an Acer Ferrari 4000 laptop (awesome machine) which officially supports WinXP x64, so I've got that running fine but the lack of app support at the moment makes it kinda pointless. eg. I'm yet to find a full x64 J2EE Server on Windows.
Needless to say the course was less than effective and illustrates what should be the seventh dumbest idea - "Security policies have no effect on productivity". The amount of grief caused to companies by rigid, pedantic security nazis is astounding.
High quality biodiesel is a good option for piston aircraft. Turbo diesel powered piston aircraft are very popular now in Europe and militaries the world over will drive adoption as it means they only need one type of fuel for their various vehicles. Avgas is getting rarer and much more expensive so expect to see a fairly smooth transition to diesel over the next 10-15 years.
Jets are a big problem. I don't think biodiesel is volatile enough to power a jet so that only leaves liquid hydrogen which requires much bigger tanks than current jets for the same amount of power.
Hot Dry Rock geothermal plants can produce constant, base load power in the 100's of megawatts and theoretically could scale to the gigawatt scale. An Australian company is currently building a demonstration plant in South Australia that could power the whole country at current levels of consumption for 70 years. Seems to me this is a much more promising area than fusion research.
There's also a Flash movie of the reflectors tracking the sun here (Their link's busted)