Base64 is not twice - it's 3 bytes into 4 characters - with a little overhead, as technically you're supposed to put a newline after every 78 characters - but I suspect that's only really relevant in the context of email.
But it's still significant enough difference to easily make the XOP overhead irrelevant in all but the smallest cases.
How do you know it's not 525? or 5115? or 75? or 514?
Marketing might not care about Roman numerals, but enough ordinary people in the world actually DO know enough roman numerals to know that that is crap AND to know that LXIV is 64. It's like the stupid virii thing - it's not an alternative, it's WRONG.
They might as well call it the Pentium sicks-T-for Afterall, it's not difficult to interpret that as 64.
if you can GET the maximum speed, then they can advertise the maximum speed - how much you can download at that speed is a totally different number.
However, that said - I don't know of any ISPs in Australia that don't let you know what the limits are very clearly and up front. It's a pity that the same doesn't seem to be the case in the USA.
no, the way I read it, someone offering X Mbps just needs to demonstrate that you can get X Mb downloaded in 1 second.
I like fast downloads, but I don't care about a lot of them - as such I'm reasonably happy with my 1.5Mbps 10GB per month plan - having downgraded from a 50GB per month that I'd never use so as to save money. I would never even consider dropping to a 512kbps / 50GB per month scheme (same price as the 1.5Mbps / 10GB), even though by your logic it would be faster than my 1.5Mb (~160kpbs average vs 32kbps average)
So when someone is advertising speed, they're advertising speed. I don't care how much it averages to over a month, I want what I'm downloading RIGHT NOW to be quick, and for the cap to be high enough to accomodate my reasonable usage.
I happen to like playing Civilization games. I don't want a different game, I want the same essential game with just enough incremental changes to be interesting and different, but not so many that it's not Civilization anymore.
There's plenty of other strategy games out there for those who have had enough Civilization, but I haven't.
The main things I'm hoping for are a better thought out Play By Email mode or equivalent (and more polish on the multiplayer in general), the ability to play in a window - or at least play nice with Alt-Tab - and better worker automation modes (or maybe scriptable workers - although that might be overkill). And of course whatever core gameplay changes Sid Meier and Firaxis can come up with.
A bigger city name database would be good too - it gets confusing going through all then "New"s and then starting ont the 2s.
You're thinking of Civilization:Call To Power which was NOT a Civilization game, despite having licensed the name.
It was a piece of crap that didn't play anything like a Civilization game. I don't know what possesed Sid Meier to license the name like that, I hope he never does it again.
the scary thing is that's not even an exageration.
Too many times I've sat down to play Civ III at 4 in the afternoon, remembered to blink at midnight, and only moved when I realised it's 7am and light outside...
just....one.....more.....turn........well, maybe the Depends thing is an exageration - I've trained my body to shut down all non Civ essential functions, so it's never come to that for me.....
I used to use vim for everything, and didn't see any need for any other IDE, after all - it does code folding, syntax highlighting, gives you an overview of you code and integrates with your build system. I still do use it for C, but at some point I decided to try out Eclipse for Java use, and after five minutes, I never went back to vi.
Eclipse feels very much like it's written by developers for developers - and I don't mean it's got a crappy UI - I mean that rather than waste time with pointless wizards for making easy things that you'll do once in a project easy (like jbuilder does), it instead concentrates on making the actual job of writing code easy.
Sloppy programming and / or paranoia by the developer.
Anything written for java 2 (1.2 and up) should work fine on the latest 1.4.x, and will probably work fine on 1.5 (I have had some funny issues with 1.5, but they were build time issues)
The only thing I've encountered that actually broke stuff in a version change was the bizarre choice by Sun to not just deprecate reading the OS environment, but to completely disable it by causing it to throw a runtime exception in 1.4 They changed their mind and re-enabled it and un deprecated it for 1.5 though.
There are plenty of simple algorithms, and plenty of mathematical ones, but that doesn't make all algorithms simple or mathematical.
Why should someone that goes to the effort of coming up with a solution to a difficult enough problem, or comes up with something completely novel and exiting be any less entitled to patent their hard work just because the implementation of the idea involves typing at a keyboard instead of working with gears and pulleys?
The biggest problem with software patents is not the fact of software being patentable, it's the failure of the patent examiners to properly distinguish between a patent that represents true inovation, and something that's just documenting a common practice or a perfectly logical combination of existing technologies (like Amazon's "One Click" patent).
Another problem is the fact that the duration of the patent is too long for the software world.
Well off you go then! Come up with "just a mathematical formula" to compress and decompress some audio as well as MP3 can. Apprently you can do it without leaving your armchair!
An invention is an idea put in to practice. There is no need for it to involve someone welding bits of metal together for it to be something new and useful.
There definitely are (quite a lot of) software patents that shouldn't be granted, and the time period should definitely be decreased to better reflect how easy it is to go from idea to implementation to obsolescence compared with a physical invention, but I don't think that you can say that all software patents are automatically invalid just because you want them to be.
No, an algorithm is not maths, it's a procedure for solving a problem. That problem might be mathematical in nature, but the algorithm itself is not a mathematical formula.
It's like the difference between having a block of wood, some wire and a spring, and designing a mouse trap.
The block of wood, wire and spring are not patentable, but the way you combine them to create a mouse trap is.
>Actually the whole point of a patent is that you invent something that takes time and effort and you tell everyone about it instead of keeping it a trade secret. As a reward for not keeping it to yourself, you are given a monopoly on it for a few years (stopping others from using your idea).
Yup, with you so far.
> Of course, this patent is not really a valid patent as it is not on an invention Well, that's a point of contention. Obviously the Patent Office thought it was, and there's certainly plenty of other things that have been patented that are far less "invention" than this.
> and didn't take time and effort But here you've completely lost me.
Are you saying it just manifest itself spontaneously in the lap of someone at Thomson and they thought "Bonus! Lets go patent it! Free Money!" right?
> Rumor has it that it's going to be priced around $8000 US. Which is pretty outrageous given that you gan do the same with a PC and some software plus a midi controller for a fraction of that.
It looks like you're asking if anyone uses SQL. That's a bit like asking if anyone uses English. Although, on Slashdot that's probably a valid question.
If you were watching the X-Files for the Sci-Fi, then you were missing the point.
It was only really the conspiracy storyline ones that were sci-fi, the rest were all horror or folklore based, or just weird stuff. And usually much better than the alien conspiracy stories too.
Slashdot Mirror
> I can't even get linux to recognize my Soundblaster Live sound card. I guess that card wasn't popular enough...
You do realize you have to plug it in first don't you?
Even Windows wont recognise an SB Live if you just wave it in front of the monitor.
Base64 is not twice - it's 3 bytes into 4 characters - with a little overhead, as technically you're supposed to put a newline after every 78 characters - but I suspect that's only really relevant in the context of email.
But it's still significant enough difference to easily make the XOP overhead irrelevant in all but the smallest cases.
How do you know it's not 525?
or 5115? or 75? or 514?
Marketing might not care about Roman numerals, but enough ordinary people in the world actually DO know enough roman numerals to know that that is crap AND to know that LXIV is 64.
It's like the stupid virii thing - it's not an alternative, it's WRONG.
They might as well call it the Pentium sicks-T-for
Afterall, it's not difficult to interpret that as 64.
No, I don't believe it's ever false advertising.
if you can GET the maximum speed, then they can advertise the maximum speed - how much you can download at that speed is a totally different number.
However, that said - I don't know of any ISPs in Australia that don't let you know what the limits are very clearly and up front. It's a pity that the same doesn't seem to be the case in the USA.
gah. clicked the wrong box. Didn't mean to post that anonymously.
What I want to know is what the hell Telstra's doing providing better broadband in NEW ZEALAND than Australia.
Who's that with?
I'm paying Netspace $80 a month for 1500/512 with 10Gig a month
Although if you're really only getting 256 upstream then I don't think I'd change, even for the lower price and higher cap.
no, the way I read it, someone offering X Mbps just needs to demonstrate that you can get X Mb downloaded in 1 second.
I like fast downloads, but I don't care about a lot of them - as such I'm reasonably happy with my 1.5Mbps 10GB per month plan - having downgraded from a 50GB per month that I'd never use so as to save money.
I would never even consider dropping to a 512kbps / 50GB per month scheme (same price as the 1.5Mbps / 10GB), even though by your logic it would be faster than my 1.5Mb (~160kpbs average vs 32kbps average)
So when someone is advertising speed, they're advertising speed. I don't care how much it averages to over a month, I want what I'm downloading RIGHT NOW to be quick, and for the cap to be high enough to accomodate my reasonable usage.
that's the POINT!
I happen to like playing Civilization games. I don't want a different game, I want the same essential game with just enough incremental changes to be interesting and different, but not so many that it's not Civilization anymore.
There's plenty of other strategy games out there for those who have had enough Civilization, but I haven't.
The main things I'm hoping for are a better thought out Play By Email mode or equivalent (and more polish on the multiplayer in general), the ability to play in a window - or at least play nice with Alt-Tab - and better worker automation modes (or maybe scriptable workers - although that might be overkill).
And of course whatever core gameplay changes Sid Meier and Firaxis can come up with.
A bigger city name database would be good too - it gets confusing going through all then "New"s and then starting ont the 2s.
You're thinking of Civilization:Call To Power which was NOT a Civilization game, despite having licensed the name.
It was a piece of crap that didn't play anything like a Civilization game. I don't know what possesed Sid Meier to license the name like that, I hope he never does it again.
I've played all three, and have felt each one to be an excellent upgrade.
They each add just enough extra to be new and interesting, but don't change too much of the gameplay to alienate fans of the previous version.
the scary thing is that's not even an exageration.
...well, maybe the Depends thing is an exageration - I've trained my body to shut down all non Civ essential functions, so it's never come to that for me.....
Too many times I've sat down to play Civ III at 4 in the afternoon, remembered to blink at midnight, and only moved when I realised it's 7am and light outside...
just....one.....more.....turn.....
no, he misspelt "misspelt".
oh well, I don't do applets or GUI stuff, maybe I should have included that as a disclaimer in my post ;)
keep trying, its really pretty easy...
I used to use vim for everything, and didn't see any need for any other IDE, after all - it does code folding, syntax highlighting, gives you an overview of you code and integrates with your build system. I still do use it for C, but at some point I decided to try out Eclipse for Java use, and after five minutes, I never went back to vi.
Eclipse feels very much like it's written by developers for developers - and I don't mean it's got a crappy UI - I mean that rather than waste time with pointless wizards for making easy things that you'll do once in a project easy (like jbuilder does), it instead concentrates on making the actual job of writing code easy.
Sloppy programming and / or paranoia by the developer.
Anything written for java 2 (1.2 and up) should work fine on the latest 1.4.x, and will probably work fine on 1.5 (I have had some funny issues with 1.5, but they were build time issues)
The only thing I've encountered that actually broke stuff in a version change was the bizarre choice by Sun to not just deprecate reading the OS environment, but to completely disable it by causing it to throw a runtime exception in 1.4 They changed their mind and re-enabled it and un deprecated it for 1.5 though.
That is not a set of steps to create something - that is a mathematical representation of a natural phenomenon.
You cant tell me that MP3 encoding is a natural phenomenon that was just waiting for Thomson to discover it.
Or you could, but I wouldn't believe you.
No you're confusing definition with instance.
There are plenty of simple algorithms, and plenty of mathematical ones, but that doesn't make all algorithms simple or mathematical.
Why should someone that goes to the effort of coming up with a solution to a difficult enough problem, or comes up with something completely novel and exiting be any less entitled to patent their hard work just because the implementation of the idea involves typing at a keyboard instead of working with gears and pulleys?
The biggest problem with software patents is not the fact of software being patentable, it's the failure of the patent examiners to properly distinguish between a patent that represents true inovation, and something that's just documenting a common practice or a perfectly logical combination of existing technologies (like Amazon's "One Click" patent).
Another problem is the fact that the duration of the patent is too long for the software world.
Well off you go then! Come up with "just a mathematical formula" to compress and decompress some audio as well as MP3 can. Apprently you can do it without leaving your armchair!
An invention is an idea put in to practice. There is no need for it to involve someone welding bits of metal together for it to be something new and useful.
There definitely are (quite a lot of) software patents that shouldn't be granted, and the time period should definitely be decreased to better reflect how easy it is to go from idea to implementation to obsolescence compared with a physical invention, but I don't think that you can say that all software patents are automatically invalid just because you want them to be.
No, an algorithm is not maths, it's a procedure for solving a problem. That problem might be mathematical in nature, but the algorithm itself is not a mathematical formula.
It's like the difference between having a block of wood, some wire and a spring, and designing a mouse trap.
The block of wood, wire and spring are not patentable, but the way you combine them to create a mouse trap is.
>Actually the whole point of a patent is that you invent something that takes time and effort and you tell everyone about it instead of keeping it a trade secret. As a reward for not keeping it to yourself, you are given a monopoly on it for a few years (stopping others from using your idea).
Yup, with you so far.
> Of course, this patent is not really a valid patent as it is not on an invention
Well, that's a point of contention. Obviously the Patent Office thought it was, and there's certainly plenty of other things that have been patented that are far less "invention" than this.
> and didn't take time and effort
But here you've completely lost me.
Are you saying it just manifest itself spontaneously in the lap of someone at Thomson and they thought "Bonus! Lets go patent it! Free Money!" right?
and the depressing thing is, people would buy it.
> Rumor has it that it's going to be priced around $8000 US. Which is pretty outrageous given that you gan do the same with a PC and some software plus a midi controller for a fraction of that.
Welcome to the world of professional audio.
There's a reason musicians are poor....
which syntax are you referring to?
The [ ] quoting? or the select query itself?
It looks like you're asking if anyone uses SQL.
That's a bit like asking if anyone uses English. Although, on Slashdot that's probably a valid question.
If you were watching the X-Files for the Sci-Fi, then you were missing the point.
It was only really the conspiracy storyline ones that were sci-fi, the rest were all horror or folklore based, or just weird stuff. And usually much better than the alien conspiracy stories too.