Amen, brother! I just stopped smoking, and it's KILLING me not being able to just get up and walk off for a little bit. Well, I can, but what would I do?
It's a very famous Victorian case. Necessity was not accepted as a defence; they were actually sentenced to death, although Queen Victoria later commuted the sentence to six months (the judge, Lord Coleridge, actually expressed the hope that she would do this.)
One of the key issues pertinent to this discussion was that Coleridge didn't see any valid reason to choose the cabin boy for sacrifice over the other parties in the boat:
"Who is to be the judge of this sort of necessity? By what measure is the comparative value of lives to be measured? Is it to be strength, or intellect, or what? It is plain that the principle leaves to him who is to profit by it to determine the necessity which will justify him in deliberately taking another's life to save his own. In [the present case] the weakest, the youngest, the most unresisting life was chosen. Was it more necessary to kill him than one of the grown men? The answer be, No."
(Eg, books on tape are probably still more popular than books on CD, partly because tape is more than adequate for the audio range of the spoken voice, and partly because more cars have tape players than CD players.)
...and more to the point because when you stop a tape, it will start up playing again where you left off.
These two things tend to be somewhat opposing. When considering things you can do with the phone, range is ususally helped by (1) more power provided by a bigger battery and (2) a larger antenna. Neither of which help much with 'compact'.
What does help however is a better network; which is probably why I've only very rarely been out of coverage anywhere in Europe in the last five years (generally only when in a tunnel or on top of a mountain.) It wasn't always this way; the networks have got phenomenally better, and roaming is simple and automatic. My father, who lives in the country, has been able to shrink his phone from a 'briefcase' portable model with a 25cm-long antenna to a standard tiny internal-antenna handheld - all due to network improvement.
A better network also massively improves your battery life, as the phone can operate in a lower power mode; I get around five days to a week between charges (in fairness, mainly using text messaging.)
"No signal" seems to be a primarily American complaint. I know about the population density thing, but there seem to be major problems in cities too. (And one doesn't hear that complaint from Australia so much?) The "Why in the world would you think your (cell) phone would work in your house?" quote from Verizon's CEO would be incomprehensible here, where many people have dumped land-lines entirely and just use their mobiles.
There are certain contexts in which it is appropriate to refer to all of Ireland as a "country." The word is not synonymous with "nation state," which all of Ireland certainly is not. Referring to all Ireland as a "country" in this way is not making any political claim in the present day but rather simply recognising a common history and culture.
The Wikipedia article on "Country" has a good discussion of this. The United Kingdom, for example, is a nation state but it is made up of three countries (England, Scotland and Wales) and one province (Northern Ireland). Other examples where country and nation state are not synonymous include, for example, the Basque Country, which uses the word "country" in the primary languages of the two nation states it is spread over (País Vasco in Spanish, Pays-Basque in French).
The most obvious example of where this nomenclature is uncontroversially used with regard to Ireland is probably in rugby, where the Six nations tournament is made up of the "countries" of England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, France, and Italy.
Of course, quality will jump tremendously when we switch over from the RGRB CCDs to tri-color CCD's. Slightly offtopic, does anyone know the progress of this? When will we be able to get true 3-color CCD cameras? About two years ago I had heard this would be in about a year...
You are probably thinking of Foveon's X3 sensor. The first production camera with this sensor was the Sigma SD9 Digital SLR, way back in November 2002, but as of writing the sensor is only available in a handful of cameras.
The X3 sensor works with three photodetectors in a column at each pixel location, rather than a conventional sensor which uses a flat RGBG matrix and only measures a single colour at each pixel location.
Consensus is that X3 is definately better than a conventional sensor with the same pixel resolution, but not as good as a conventional CCD with the same number of photodetectors. So the 3x3 megapixel sensor in the SD9 (marketed by Foveon/Sigma as 9 megapixel) is unquestionably better than a conventional 3 megapixel sensor but not as good as a conventional 9 megapixel sensor, losing in particular in the resolution stakes.
It has also arguably been somewhat hobbled by a lack of mainstream support and a number of annoying quirks on the Sigma cameras (the SD9, for example, was RAW only.) This lack of support is understandable many of the big manufacturers have significant R&D invested in their (conventional) in-house sensor technology - and at the moment this tech seems to be advancing faster than Foveon's; I think we could be seeing another Transmeta situation here.
The only problem i cna think of is remote control. There are plenty of web front ends for Winamp that allow you to control it through a browser (just Google - can't remember offhand the particular one I used); or alternatively there is always Terminal Services/VNC, etc.
Disk grinding is a sign that the OS is having to use virtual memory. My PIII laptop runs XP fine with 512mb (256 factory+256 added). If it were a desktop, I'd suggest a gig (memory is very cheap these days), for this machine consider adding 512mb if you can afford it for a total of 768mb.
256 is just not enough (and there is a good chance that some of that is being stolen for integrated graphics.) We have two machines with 256 in here, and they are horrible to use. Exact same machine with a gig and it sails.
http://www.crucial.com do a 256mb module for the Inspiron 1100 for $33.99. This will be more than enough to make the machine usable.
Also, presuming that you keep the OS patched regularly through Windows Update, you don't use IE/Outlook, and your wife doesn't open random attachments, etc., disable the background anti-virus and spyware scanning and just run full scans overnight once a week instead. Background antivirus is a horrendous resource hog.
If you actually need to use a function in Enterprise, and the client is happy to buy CF Enterprise, then I don't see what the problem is. You can develop at home on single-IP Enterprise and run the same code on the standard version for them (As I am presuming that they do not need the funky features to populate content.)
For that matter, if the client is buying Enterprise for your application, just run it on your server until development is finished and then transfer it over to them.
(And if you aren't overly sensitive to breaking the EULA, you can just stick the developer version behind a proxy and access it from as many machines as you like - technically I don't think you _would_ even be breaking the EULA if you were careful not to use it at the same time as your client.)
iPod is ahead because it _works_ and its _simple_ and _easy to use_ and most people don't give a shit about feature XYZ they just want to play their music.
Contrast Sony where you have to jump through hoops and have all the check-in check-out and (previously) convert to ATRAC bullzhit... Sony are frankly GONE as a player in this market (and I like their products, I'm typing this on a Vaio.)
Non-US territory is not included in Google maps AFAIK, although they seem to have wider satellite coverage, in particular of Latin (North) America - I think they are getting the data from different sources. You can zoom in to varying degrees (not much in Europe, but pretty far in Mexico, Cuba, etc and even more in Bermuda.)
Canada is the exception, Google now considering it basically part of the US and so providing maps;-)
...320k is the top bitrate in the mp3 standard and as such is inherently CBR - you can't go any higher (LAME --alt-preset insane is 320k CBR, unlike the other presets.)
Agree with you on the transparency issue, LAME APS is enough for me personally.
Also agree on the 'hard drives can never be too big' point - video in particular is the key driver here. One of the key advantages of FLAC however is that you can easily transcode into whatever new format you might like without having to re-rip all your CDs.
...that with a compression algorithm that claimed to compress _any_ file, you could just keep feeding its output back into itself, effectively allowing the reduction of _any_ file to 1 bit.
The number of recharge cycles is measured on a nominal 'deep' discharge/recharge cycle. Partial top-ups and discharges don't count as a full cycle, and are recommended with LiIon due to the lack of a 'memory effect.' Apple have a good page explaining this.
The greater problem with LiIon is that they loose about 20% capacity per year from the date of manufacture, irrespective of whether they are used or not.
...the test of obviousness is whether it would be obvious to a person skilled in the technical field of the invention, or, in specific legal terms, a person having ordinary skill in the art.
...the fact that they are charging for it, (even if making a profit), is irrelevant. The idea is that the government can unfairly compete with private interests; however this would also have the potential to ban, for example, free Wifi in libraries.
Sure, but it was 'free' in the sense that you didn't have to pay for the ISP subscription _on top of_ the phone calls (which was the case previously in Ireland at least, although they did bring in a daytime discount rate for internet).
The key thing here is that around the time the internet was taking off, local phone calls in Europe were not generally free, unlike the US.
Interestingly in Ireland in the 80s, local phone calls were however flat rate, ~10p for as long as you wanted. I was using a C64 service called Compunet at the time (a UK-wide service that had a node in Dublin), and would just leave the phone connected, much to the envy of my British friends who suffered a per-minute charge with BT.
Per-minute charges on local calls were however brought in here by the monopoly telco just as data services started to become more popular...
That's how 'free internet' worked here in Ireland; more correctly called 'no subscription internet' where you were instead charged the cost of a normal local call, and the ISP got a cut for terminating the call. Freeserve in the UK was the first 'free' ISP in Europe following this model I believe, although the market has now swung more towards flat-rate and then broadband.
Slashdot Mirror
Amen, brother! I just stopped smoking, and it's KILLING me not being able to just get up and walk off for a little bit. Well, I can, but what would I do?
Have a drink...
One of the key issues pertinent to this discussion was that Coleridge didn't see any valid reason to choose the cabin boy for sacrifice over the other parties in the boat: Wikipedia article
...there is a Guinness ad (called "Swim to the States") in which someone does just that...
compact phone with amazing range
These two things tend to be somewhat opposing. When considering things you can do with the phone, range is ususally helped by (1) more power provided by a bigger battery and (2) a larger antenna. Neither of which help much with 'compact'.
What does help however is a better network; which is probably why I've only very rarely been out of coverage anywhere in Europe in the last five years (generally only when in a tunnel or on top of a mountain.) It wasn't always this way; the networks have got phenomenally better, and roaming is simple and automatic. My father, who lives in the country, has been able to shrink his phone from a 'briefcase' portable model with a 25cm-long antenna to a standard tiny internal-antenna handheld - all due to network improvement.
A better network also massively improves your battery life, as the phone can operate in a lower power mode; I get around five days to a week between charges (in fairness, mainly using text messaging.)
"No signal" seems to be a primarily American complaint. I know about the population density thing, but there seem to be major problems in cities too. (And one doesn't hear that complaint from Australia so much?) The "Why in the world would you think your (cell) phone would work in your house?" quote from Verizon's CEO would be incomprehensible here, where many people have dumped land-lines entirely and just use their mobiles.
We're all part of the european superstate these days, anyhow. ;-(
Public attitude towards the EU is probably one of the key differentiators between the Irish and the British these days
There are certain contexts in which it is appropriate to refer to all of Ireland as a "country." The word is not synonymous with "nation state," which all of Ireland certainly is not. Referring to all Ireland as a "country" in this way is not making any political claim in the present day but rather simply recognising a common history and culture.
The Wikipedia article on "Country" has a good discussion of this. The United Kingdom, for example, is a nation state but it is made up of three countries (England, Scotland and Wales) and one province (Northern Ireland). Other examples where country and nation state are not synonymous include, for example, the Basque Country, which uses the word "country" in the primary languages of the two nation states it is spread over (País Vasco in Spanish, Pays-Basque in French).
The most obvious example of where this nomenclature is uncontroversially used with regard to Ireland is probably in rugby, where the Six nations tournament is made up of the "countries" of England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, France, and Italy.
Of course, quality will jump tremendously when we switch over from the RGRB CCDs to tri-color CCD's. Slightly offtopic, does anyone know the progress of this? When will we be able to get true 3-color CCD cameras? About two years ago I had heard this would be in about a year...
You are probably thinking of Foveon's X3 sensor. The first production camera with this sensor was the Sigma SD9 Digital SLR, way back in November 2002, but as of writing the sensor is only available in a handful of cameras.
The X3 sensor works with three photodetectors in a column at each pixel location, rather than a conventional sensor which uses a flat RGBG matrix and only measures a single colour at each pixel location.
Consensus is that X3 is definately better than a conventional sensor with the same pixel resolution, but not as good as a conventional CCD with the same number of photodetectors. So the 3x3 megapixel sensor in the SD9 (marketed by Foveon/Sigma as 9 megapixel) is unquestionably better than a conventional 3 megapixel sensor but not as good as a conventional 9 megapixel sensor, losing in particular in the resolution stakes.
It has also arguably been somewhat hobbled by a lack of mainstream support and a number of annoying quirks on the Sigma cameras (the SD9, for example, was RAW only.) This lack of support is understandable many of the big manufacturers have significant R&D invested in their (conventional) in-house sensor technology - and at the moment this tech seems to be advancing faster than Foveon's; I think we could be seeing another Transmeta situation here.
The only problem i cna think of is remote control.
There are plenty of web front ends for Winamp that allow you to control it through a browser (just Google - can't remember offhand the particular one I used); or alternatively there is always Terminal Services/VNC, etc.
DNS entry is still there. xxxx@s1:~$ host warez.mcc.ac.uk warez.mcc.ac.uk has address 127.0.0.1
;)
Uh yeah, site seems to be down though
Disk grinding is a sign that the OS is having to use virtual memory. My PIII laptop runs XP fine with 512mb (256 factory+256 added). If it were a desktop, I'd suggest a gig (memory is very cheap these days), for this machine consider adding 512mb if you can afford it for a total of 768mb.
256 is just not enough (and there is a good chance that some of that is being stolen for integrated graphics.) We have two machines with 256 in here, and they are horrible to use. Exact same machine with a gig and it sails.
http://www.crucial.com do a 256mb module for the Inspiron 1100 for $33.99. This will be more than enough to make the machine usable.
Also, presuming that you keep the OS patched regularly through Windows Update, you don't use IE/Outlook, and your wife doesn't open random attachments, etc., disable the background anti-virus and spyware scanning and just run full scans overnight once a week instead. Background antivirus is a horrendous resource hog.
If you actually need to use a function in Enterprise, and the client is happy to buy CF Enterprise, then I don't see what the problem is. You can develop at home on single-IP Enterprise and run the same code on the standard version for them (As I am presuming that they do not need the funky features to populate content.)
For that matter, if the client is buying Enterprise for your application, just run it on your server until development is finished and then transfer it over to them.
(And if you aren't overly sensitive to breaking the EULA, you can just stick the developer version behind a proxy and access it from as many machines as you like - technically I don't think you _would_ even be breaking the EULA if you were careful not to use it at the same time as your client.)
When your input-bound processes are waiting for input, they aren't taking up CPU time anyway.
I don't mind the negative comparisons to Japan, South Korea, Denmark. But *Canada*! That really hurts.
... and more to the point there is *NO* DRM with your own direct-ripped mp3s...
iPod is ahead because it _works_ and its _simple_ and _easy to use_ and most people don't give a shit about feature XYZ they just want to play their music.
Contrast Sony where you have to jump through hoops and have all the check-in check-out and (previously) convert to ATRAC bullzhit... Sony are frankly GONE as a player in this market (and I like their products, I'm typing this on a Vaio.)
Non-US territory is not included in Google maps AFAIK, although they seem to have wider satellite coverage, in particular of Latin (North) America - I think they are getting the data from different sources. You can zoom in to varying degrees (not much in Europe, but pretty far in Mexico, Cuba, etc and even more in Bermuda.)
;-)
Canada is the exception, Google now considering it basically part of the US and so providing maps
...320k is the top bitrate in the mp3 standard and as such is inherently CBR - you can't go any higher (LAME --alt-preset insane is 320k CBR, unlike the other presets.)
Agree with you on the transparency issue, LAME APS is enough for me personally.
Also agree on the 'hard drives can never be too big' point - video in particular is the key driver here. One of the key advantages of FLAC however is that you can easily transcode into whatever new format you might like without having to re-rip all your CDs.
...that with a compression algorithm that claimed to compress _any_ file, you could just keep feeding its output back into itself, effectively allowing the reduction of _any_ file to 1 bit.
Which is clearly not possible.
The number of recharge cycles is measured on a nominal 'deep' discharge/recharge cycle. Partial top-ups and discharges don't count as a full cycle, and are recommended with LiIon due to the lack of a 'memory effect.' Apple have a good page explaining this.
The greater problem with LiIon is that they loose about 20% capacity per year from the date of manufacture, irrespective of whether they are used or not.
Liechtenstein. They'll help you out if NATO invades.
...the test of obviousness is whether it would be obvious to a person skilled in the technical field of the invention, or, in specific legal terms, a person having ordinary skill in the art.
...the fact that they are charging for it, (even if making a profit), is irrelevant. The idea is that the government can unfairly compete with private interests; however this would also have the potential to ban, for example, free Wifi in libraries.
Sure, but it was 'free' in the sense that you didn't have to pay for the ISP subscription _on top of_ the phone calls (which was the case previously in Ireland at least, although they did bring in a daytime discount rate for internet).
The key thing here is that around the time the internet was taking off, local phone calls in Europe were not generally free, unlike the US.
Interestingly in Ireland in the 80s, local phone calls were however flat rate, ~10p for as long as you wanted. I was using a C64 service called Compunet at the time (a UK-wide service that had a node in Dublin), and would just leave the phone connected, much to the envy of my British friends who suffered a per-minute charge with BT.
Per-minute charges on local calls were however brought in here by the monopoly telco just as data services started to become more popular...
That's how 'free internet' worked here in Ireland; more correctly called 'no subscription internet' where you were instead charged the cost of a normal local call, and the ISP got a cut for terminating the call. Freeserve in the UK was the first 'free' ISP in Europe following this model I believe, although the market has now swung more towards flat-rate and then broadband.