Oh, and a clarification for the people who are not familiar with meteor showers and photography: When we talk about a meteor shower associated with a constellation, e.g. Perseids, we don't mean you can just point a camera at Perseus and get the meteors. The meteors will cover most of the sky, appearing in a radial pattern that points outward from the area of Perseus and, in fact, the farther a meteor appears from the "origin" part of the sky, the longer its "tail" or visible path will be. So, you don't really have a particular spot to aim and if you use a lens longer than say 50-80mm, you will need a lot of luck to actually get a meteor passing through your field of view.
I mean, for a meteor shower you would need a wide field, right? Probably under 150mm? Then small tracking errors such as minor vibrations would not really show up in the photo. I remember when I was in school, I was piggybacking on my manual equatorial mount telescope and I could manage crisp photos tracking manually - I doubt the inexpensive mounts are worse. I am assuming you have already tried fixed-mount photographing techniques for meteors, such as star-trail exposures or shooting repeatedly at exposures just before the stars start to trail (which of course depends on your lens & what dec. you are pointing at), and are considering advancing to something else. Otherwise try that first, budget astrophotography can start VERY cheap;)
The numbers simply don't add up: -We know Chinese ISP's block all interesting content like pr0n. -We know at least 95% of internet users browse pr0n almost daily.
Or they could make it a bit harder to get a D... Simply you get a passing grade if you deserve to pass...
Oblig:
Nigel Tufnel: The numbers all go to eleven. Look, right across the board, eleven, eleven, eleven and... Marty DiBergi: Oh, I see. And most amps go up to ten? Nigel Tufnel: Exactly. Marty DiBergi: Does that mean it's louder? Is it any louder? Nigel Tufnel: Well, it's one louder, isn't it? It's not ten. You see, most blokes, you know, will be playing at ten. You're on ten here, all the way up, all the way up, all the way up, you're on ten on your guitar. Where can you go from there? Where? Marty DiBergi: I don't know. Nigel Tufnel: Nowhere. Exactly. What we do is, if we need that extra push over the cliff, you know what we do? Marty DiBergi: Put it up to eleven. Nigel Tufnel: Eleven. Exactly. One louder. Marty DiBergi: Why don't you just make ten louder and make ten be the top number and make that a little louder? Nigel Tufnel: [pause] These go to eleven.
You still don't understand what it means for a torrent to have over 1 million ACTUAL SEEDS??? The "2 year old" is just an extra, but it is proof you haven't read the report: IN THE SAME LIST there are torrents from 2010. Yeah, 2 year old data, that's the only problem...
Instead of calling other people close-minded zealots, just admit you have no clue what the f*ck we are talking about and climb back to your cave.
And for the record, I never said I believe there are more legal torrents etc. I.e. I have no idea whether the report's findings are close to the truth and I don't care. But you simply can't base ANY conclusion on garbage data. Garbage in - garbage out...
If you could comprehend the facts you would see that my analogy was perfect. Perhaps you did not read the study? Their data includes such gems as a 2-year old dvd release having over 1 million seeds! Obviously if I included data from one dealership that claimed to have sold many times the entire US sale volume just by themselves, even if I included all other "truthful" dealerships my results would be useless. So, is there a research by Princeton that claims there are torrents with over 1 million SEEDS? I dare you to show it to me. So, the problem is with the DATA. Whether the result of the data analysis is close to the truth or not, it is not the biggest problem here.
His problem is not with the analysis, it is much more fundamental than that.. They are using obviously bogus data, so whatever analysis they perform on them their results are rubbish.
The car analogy equivalent: We researched current auto sales to figure out the 2010 market share for auto companies, and found out that Dodge is leading with 95% of the market. 99% of Dodge sales come from a single dodge dealership whose owner Mr. Al Coholic, informed us they sold 50 million dodge cars from January 2010...
Whenever I see these anti-trust probes I can't but wonder why nobody cares about what I see as a textbook case of monopoly abuse. Ebay has a definite monopoly on online auctions and they use it to push paypal down our throats (claiming not even Google checkout is safe...)
We are talking about R&D here. Do you seriously think Boeing can (can = want) perform an R&D contract for the government worth just $18 million? It would certainly be a first! Now, after the $18 billion R&D they certainly have the expertise to build capsules for $18 mil each.
Most of the replies to my comment seem to suffer from some sort of reading comprehension deficiency. Let me make it more clear. The problem is small for the typical iphone buyer. They just want an iphone, perhaps the one with "the big Gee Bees". Now, if it can also make calls, even if it is worse than other phones in that respect, then great. The problem is also small for me IN COMPARISON with other problems and limitations iphones have.
PS. Interestingly I am an iPhone developer. I do like Obj C and Cocoa. But my iPhone (bought by my employer of course) is permanently tethered to my Mac as a debugger. I carry around a N900 (which I also don't think is a great "phone", but is a perfect everything else).
How many more stories about this crap? The holy iPhone has a small defect. Guess what, it is not the biggest problem that the "form over function" philosophy has brought to the device. Those who value form will always buy the stupid device, its ability to complete calls (if you don't hold it the wrong way) is just an extra. As for the "death grip". We were not talking about any death grips, that was never the issue and people don't usually hold their phone like that. The problem was with simply touching the device at the bottom corner and only the iPhone 4 has a problem (for "why" and "does it matter" see first paragraph of post). And can we get on now? This is getting more annoying than dupes.
Pff, my solar farm will go strong at 24/7 once I set it up on the light side on the moon... You know the one opposite the dark side... Oh, wait...
But seriously, you can't compare solar availability to wind. If you choose a site with decent sunshine you pretty much have stable energy for most hours of the day and no such thing as "spikes". As an example, in Athens (Greece, not Georgia) most people have solar water heaters on the roof of their houses. Since the water tank is insulated, it can hold the heat for over a day without sunshine. The result is that you only get 1-2 days per year when you have to use electricity to use water. You should realize that the solar heater is the equivalent of a solar generator + battery (the water tank), and works pretty well. So I always think that the low to middle latitudes should focus on solar since wind power has unpredictable availability (which has lead to this discussion), is not great for birds, has problems with interference if not spread out etc.
they color coded those fiber optic cables! I only have 3 going in my AV receiver and all being black has given me some challenge. Imagine dozens of those each belonging to a different telco - how could they tell them apart without color coding?
PS. Yes, I figured out it was about FDM after reading the summary carefully, still the above were some of the thoughts reading the Title and skimming half the summary... I mean it is not like color-coding fiber optics does not have a specific meaning (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_coding_of_optical_fibers#Color_coding) and could also be used to describe FDM...
You do realize that PCIe 1.0 16x is still 4GB/s, right? The point is, would the integrated graphics of a laptop be slower than a card limited to less than 1GB/s? I bet the answer is no.
Wilocity told us that wPCIe can push bits at up to 5Gbps (625MB/s), and that the spec should move "quickly" to 7Gbps (875MB/s).
If you consider that PCIe 16x is 16GB/s (128Gbps), this is very underwhelming. Call me a sceptic but I don't see a real-world application of "wireless PCI-E" that is slower than a 1-lane PCI-E. Well, at least a real-world application regarding graphics...
While your tone indicates you are trolling, I found it interesting that in the case where a driver called 911 while he had a stuck accelerator, the 911 operator immediately asked him if he tried turning the engine off. While driving with the engine off is not great (you lose steering), it is better than accelerating, so I thought that was some clear thinking by the operator. In any case, don't these cars have hand brakes or park brakes to try?
For drivers: ATI (AMD now) has not had a problem with drivers for some years now and they are considered at least on par with nVidia. Where nVidia has a slight advantage is that for the titles that they pay (The Way It's Meant To Be Played) they have excellent support from day 1. For ATI in some cases you will have to wait for the next driver update for e.g. eyefinity to work properly, although as I said the good quality of the drivers generally leads to newly released games having no problems. Also, note that ATI has a very strict driver release schedule. Once a month. This can be an advantage (no more wondering when a driver will come out) or a disadvantage (say the new game that had the eyefinity problem got released just after the driver update) depending how you look at it. Also for my Linux multiple-display system I have had no problems with ATI during the last few years, although I haven't tried running anything graphically demanding like games on that system. For performance of ATI graphics cards: Until the release of the GTX 460, ATI had at least equal or often better performance/price ratio during this generation compared to nVidia, and even with the GTX 460, ATI still has better performance/watt if you care about that. Now, it seems that at the $200 price point the ATI 5830 1GB trades blows with the nVidia GTX 460 768MB, and the GTX 460 1GB is better (although at an extra $30). I bet ATI did not expect the performance of the new nVidia part, so wait for a few days for the market to adapt, e.g. the superior 5850 dropping price to come closer to the GTX 460 etc
The reality is that these plus and minus effects cancel each other, and the US average ends up being accurate..... AND about 0.5 Mbit/s faster than the EU average.
Enjoy your 0.7Mbit connection. Yeah, it is enough.
No point arguing with you, but an attempt: Let's start with Statistics 101. You have 10 people on 0.05Mbit/s, 10 people on 50Mbit/s and 30 people on 3Mbit/s. What is their average speed? Almost 12Mbit/s. Do you think that is a useful description of the situation? Do you understand why I am saying 50+Mbit connections are skewing the result and we should be instead looking at the MEDIAN (3Mbit in the example)? No, there are no faster than DSL home connection in the Greek example, but there are certainly dial-up connections in rural areas.
But yeah, "we are keeping pace", so we sleep tight.
Let's not rely on anecdotal evidence then. First, let me emphasize that I am complaining about city broadband, not rural areas where idiotic comments focus the problem of low US broadband speeds. Second, you have to realize that the reported "average" speeds in the US are skewed positively by the availability of 50-100Mbit connections. For example in some sources NY state is supposed to have an average speed of 12Mbit, when, as I explained, most of New York city is limited to a measly 3Mbit (unless you want around 400kbps real upload, then it is 5Mbit cable), then if you go to e.g. Long Island there is a battle between OptimumOnline and Verizon so they are offering 50-100Mbit. Screw the average, give me the median or tell me how many millions are limited to 3Mbit. AFAIC, the average for New York City has been 3Mbps for years - DSLAMs are close enough for maxing out ADSL, but those DSLAMs have never been updated. Let's move over to Greece. You will note that I already said it is the slowest EU member, hence the importance as an example. Now, most sources cite a 7Mbit average. The way it works (at least for the capital Athens, i.e. 40% of the population of Greece) is that you have around 10 telecoms to choose from who all offer ADSL2+. Most of those reach customers through the wiring that belongs to the ex-public Telecom, and a few are developing their own networks. Anyway, if you look at the density of the DSLAMs at the various parts of Athens: (e.g. http://www.adslgr.com/features/map/exchanges.php?id=3 , http://www.adslgr.com/features/map/exchanges.php?id=5) You will see that given the ADSL2+ tech used, most users will be getting over 8Mbit. Now, all telecoms except the largest one give you the full "up to 24Mbit" speed at a low price, around 30-40 Euros. However, the ex-public telecom that mostly non-savy or not-on-a-budget people use, will charge you extra for anything over 2Mbit, even more for over 8Mbit, so a lot of people who don't know or don't want to change ISP prefer not to pay extra. So, a 7Mbit average is reasonable, but the point is that almost all over Athens you can get at least that kind of speed for a low price. There's not just a single telecom and a single cable provider each offering you their craptastic service. Again, that is the worst of Europe.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh, and a clarification for the people who are not familiar with meteor showers and photography: When we talk about a meteor shower associated with a constellation, e.g. Perseids, we don't mean you can just point a camera at Perseus and get the meteors. The meteors will cover most of the sky, appearing in a radial pattern that points outward from the area of Perseus and, in fact, the farther a meteor appears from the "origin" part of the sky, the longer its "tail" or visible path will be. So, you don't really have a particular spot to aim and if you use a lens longer than say 50-80mm, you will need a lot of luck to actually get a meteor passing through your field of view.
I mean, for a meteor shower you would need a wide field, right? Probably under 150mm? Then small tracking errors such as minor vibrations would not really show up in the photo. I remember when I was in school, I was piggybacking on my manual equatorial mount telescope and I could manage crisp photos tracking manually - I doubt the inexpensive mounts are worse. ;)
I am assuming you have already tried fixed-mount photographing techniques for meteors, such as star-trail exposures or shooting repeatedly at exposures just before the stars start to trail (which of course depends on your lens & what dec. you are pointing at), and are considering advancing to something else. Otherwise try that first, budget astrophotography can start VERY cheap
The numbers simply don't add up:
-We know Chinese ISP's block all interesting content like pr0n.
-We know at least 95% of internet users browse pr0n almost daily.
So how can this be? :)
Or they could make it a bit harder to get a D... Simply you get a passing grade if you deserve to pass...
Oblig:
Nigel Tufnel: The numbers all go to eleven. Look, right across the board, eleven, eleven, eleven and...
Marty DiBergi: Oh, I see. And most amps go up to ten?
Nigel Tufnel: Exactly.
Marty DiBergi: Does that mean it's louder? Is it any louder?
Nigel Tufnel: Well, it's one louder, isn't it? It's not ten. You see, most blokes, you know, will be playing at ten. You're on ten here, all the way up, all the way up, all the way up, you're on ten on your guitar. Where can you go from there? Where?
Marty DiBergi: I don't know.
Nigel Tufnel: Nowhere. Exactly. What we do is, if we need that extra push over the cliff, you know what we do?
Marty DiBergi: Put it up to eleven.
Nigel Tufnel: Eleven. Exactly. One louder.
Marty DiBergi: Why don't you just make ten louder and make ten be the top number and make that a little louder?
Nigel Tufnel: [pause] These go to eleven.
You still don't understand what it means for a torrent to have over 1 million ACTUAL SEEDS???
The "2 year old" is just an extra, but it is proof you haven't read the report: IN THE SAME LIST there are torrents from 2010. Yeah, 2 year old data, that's the only problem...
Instead of calling other people close-minded zealots, just admit you have no clue what the f*ck we are talking about and climb back to your cave.
And for the record, I never said I believe there are more legal torrents etc. I.e. I have no idea whether the report's findings are close to the truth and I don't care. But you simply can't base ANY conclusion on garbage data. Garbage in - garbage out...
If you could comprehend the facts you would see that my analogy was perfect.
Perhaps you did not read the study?
Their data includes such gems as a 2-year old dvd release having over 1 million seeds! Obviously if I included data from one dealership that claimed to have sold many times the entire US sale volume just by themselves, even if I included all other "truthful" dealerships my results would be useless.
So, is there a research by Princeton that claims there are torrents with over 1 million SEEDS? I dare you to show it to me.
So, the problem is with the DATA. Whether the result of the data analysis is close to the truth or not, it is not the biggest problem here.
His problem is not with the analysis, it is much more fundamental than that.. They are using obviously bogus data, so whatever analysis they perform on them their results are rubbish.
The car analogy equivalent: We researched current auto sales to figure out the 2010 market share for auto companies, and found out that Dodge is leading with 95% of the market. 99% of Dodge sales come from a single dodge dealership whose owner Mr. Al Coholic, informed us they sold 50 million dodge cars from January 2010...
Whenever I see these anti-trust probes I can't but wonder why nobody cares about what I see as a textbook case of monopoly abuse.
Ebay has a definite monopoly on online auctions and they use it to push paypal down our throats (claiming not even Google checkout is safe...)
What if you have a monopoly on supercool (not the liquid nitrogen variety) computers? Why is it ok to tie your hardware to your software then?
We are talking about R&D here. Do you seriously think Boeing can (can = want) perform an R&D contract for the government worth just $18 million? It would certainly be a first!
Now, after the $18 billion R&D they certainly have the expertise to build capsules for $18 mil each.
"This kind of crap we can do (or, ehm, draw) with 18 mil..."
Now fork over 18 bil. and we'll see what we can do!
This is Boeing after all!
Or does this make Soyuz look state-of-the-art?
Most of the replies to my comment seem to suffer from some sort of reading comprehension deficiency.
Let me make it more clear.
The problem is small for the typical iphone buyer. They just want an iphone, perhaps the one with "the big Gee Bees". Now, if it can also make calls, even if it is worse than other phones in that respect, then great.
The problem is also small for me IN COMPARISON with other problems and limitations iphones have.
PS. Interestingly I am an iPhone developer. I do like Obj C and Cocoa. But my iPhone (bought by my employer of course) is permanently tethered to my Mac as a debugger. I carry around a N900 (which I also don't think is a great "phone", but is a perfect everything else).
How many more stories about this crap? The holy iPhone has a small defect. Guess what, it is not the biggest problem that the "form over function" philosophy has brought to the device. Those who value form will always buy the stupid device, its ability to complete calls (if you don't hold it the wrong way) is just an extra.
As for the "death grip". We were not talking about any death grips, that was never the issue and people don't usually hold their phone like that. The problem was with simply touching the device at the bottom corner and only the iPhone 4 has a problem (for "why" and "does it matter" see first paragraph of post).
And can we get on now? This is getting more annoying than dupes.
Or an engineer saying "the antenna around the phone works... just don't touch it there"
Pff, my solar farm will go strong at 24/7 once I set it up on the light side on the moon... You know the one opposite the dark side... Oh, wait...
But seriously, you can't compare solar availability to wind. If you choose a site with decent sunshine you pretty much have stable energy for most hours of the day and no such thing as "spikes".
As an example, in Athens (Greece, not Georgia) most people have solar water heaters on the roof of their houses. Since the water tank is insulated, it can hold the heat for over a day without sunshine. The result is that you only get 1-2 days per year when you have to use electricity to use water. You should realize that the solar heater is the equivalent of a solar generator + battery (the water tank), and works pretty well.
So I always think that the low to middle latitudes should focus on solar since wind power has unpredictable availability (which has lead to this discussion), is not great for birds, has problems with interference if not spread out etc.
CmdrTaco doesn't think it's funny...
they color coded those fiber optic cables! I only have 3 going in my AV receiver and all being black has given me some challenge. Imagine dozens of those each belonging to a different telco - how could they tell them apart without color coding?
PS. Yes, I figured out it was about FDM after reading the summary carefully, still the above were some of the thoughts reading the Title and skimming half the summary... I mean it is not like color-coding fiber optics does not have a specific meaning (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_coding_of_optical_fibers#Color_coding) and could also be used to describe FDM...
The monkey might not be enough this time...
ALL GLORY TO THE HYPNOTOAD!
You do realize that PCIe 1.0 16x is still 4GB/s, right? The point is, would the integrated graphics of a laptop be slower than a card limited to less than 1GB/s? I bet the answer is no.
Wilocity told us that wPCIe can push bits at up to 5Gbps (625MB/s), and that the spec should move "quickly" to 7Gbps (875MB/s).
If you consider that PCIe 16x is 16GB/s (128Gbps), this is very underwhelming. Call me a sceptic but I don't see a real-world application of "wireless PCI-E" that is slower than a 1-lane PCI-E. Well, at least a real-world application regarding graphics...
While your tone indicates you are trolling, I found it interesting that in the case where a driver called 911 while he had a stuck accelerator, the 911 operator immediately asked him if he tried turning the engine off. While driving with the engine off is not great (you lose steering), it is better than accelerating, so I thought that was some clear thinking by the operator.
In any case, don't these cars have hand brakes or park brakes to try?
For drivers:
ATI (AMD now) has not had a problem with drivers for some years now and they are considered at least on par with nVidia. Where nVidia has a slight advantage is that for the titles that they pay (The Way It's Meant To Be Played) they have excellent support from day 1. For ATI in some cases you will have to wait for the next driver update for e.g. eyefinity to work properly, although as I said the good quality of the drivers generally leads to newly released games having no problems. Also, note that ATI has a very strict driver release schedule. Once a month. This can be an advantage (no more wondering when a driver will come out) or a disadvantage (say the new game that had the eyefinity problem got released just after the driver update) depending how you look at it.
Also for my Linux multiple-display system I have had no problems with ATI during the last few years, although I haven't tried running anything graphically demanding like games on that system.
For performance of ATI graphics cards:
Until the release of the GTX 460, ATI had at least equal or often better performance/price ratio during this generation compared to nVidia, and even with the GTX 460, ATI still has better performance/watt if you care about that. Now, it seems that at the $200 price point the ATI 5830 1GB trades blows with the nVidia GTX 460 768MB, and the GTX 460 1GB is better (although at an extra $30). I bet ATI did not expect the performance of the new nVidia part, so wait for a few days for the market to adapt, e.g. the superior 5850 dropping price to come closer to the GTX 460 etc
The reality is that these plus and minus effects cancel each other, and the US average ends up being accurate..... AND about 0.5 Mbit/s faster than the EU average.
Enjoy your 0.7Mbit connection. Yeah, it is enough.
No point arguing with you, but an attempt:
Let's start with Statistics 101. You have 10 people on 0.05Mbit/s, 10 people on 50Mbit/s and 30 people on 3Mbit/s. What is their average speed? Almost 12Mbit/s. Do you think that is a useful description of the situation? Do you understand why I am saying 50+Mbit connections are skewing the result and we should be instead looking at the MEDIAN (3Mbit in the example)?
No, there are no faster than DSL home connection in the Greek example, but there are certainly dial-up connections in rural areas.
But yeah, "we are keeping pace", so we sleep tight.
Let's not rely on anecdotal evidence then.
First, let me emphasize that I am complaining about city broadband, not rural areas where idiotic comments focus the problem of low US broadband speeds.
Second, you have to realize that the reported "average" speeds in the US are skewed positively by the availability of 50-100Mbit connections. For example in some sources NY state is supposed to have an average speed of 12Mbit, when, as I explained, most of New York city is limited to a measly 3Mbit (unless you want around 400kbps real upload, then it is 5Mbit cable), then if you go to e.g. Long Island there is a battle between OptimumOnline and Verizon so they are offering 50-100Mbit. Screw the average, give me the median or tell me how many millions are limited to 3Mbit.
AFAIC, the average for New York City has been 3Mbps for years - DSLAMs are close enough for maxing out ADSL, but those DSLAMs have never been updated.
Let's move over to Greece. You will note that I already said it is the slowest EU member, hence the importance as an example. Now, most sources cite a 7Mbit average. The way it works (at least for the capital Athens, i.e. 40% of the population of Greece) is that you have around 10 telecoms to choose from who all offer ADSL2+. Most of those reach customers through the wiring that belongs to the ex-public Telecom, and a few are developing their own networks. Anyway, if you look at the density of the DSLAMs at the various parts of Athens: (e.g. http://www.adslgr.com/features/map/exchanges.php?id=3 , http://www.adslgr.com/features/map/exchanges.php?id=5) You will see that given the ADSL2+ tech used, most users will be getting over 8Mbit. Now, all telecoms except the largest one give you the full "up to 24Mbit" speed at a low price, around 30-40 Euros. However, the ex-public telecom that mostly non-savy or not-on-a-budget people use, will charge you extra for anything over 2Mbit, even more for over 8Mbit, so a lot of people who don't know or don't want to change ISP prefer not to pay extra. So, a 7Mbit average is reasonable, but the point is that almost all over Athens you can get at least that kind of speed for a low price. There's not just a single telecom and a single cable provider each offering you their craptastic service.
Again, that is the worst of Europe.