It's not like the graphics cards are going to be pushed to the limit - I mean, the CPU wouldn't cope with them all playing ut2004 at the same time.:-) So they shouldn't be generating all that much heat, couple of case fans should cope with it no problems.
As for the noise, it'll still be quieter than 4 separate boxes.
CERT have suggested using a different browser before (e.g. here).
I wouldn't read too much into it myself though. If one browser has a vulnerability, and another doesn't, surely it's an obvious thing to suggest? And in the past, they've pointed out the potential problems with not using IE (i.e. incompatibilities with IE-dependent sites). More a suggestion than a recommendation I'd say.
I have an ATI Radeon All-In-Wonder 9800SE, and I'm not really all that happy with it on the tv tuner front.
In my experience, the ATI drivers are somewhat buggy and temperamental on Windows, and worse on linux. Also, I'd love to use Videolan, but it's never worked fully with the AIW. The most recent release is actually able to use my AIW, but only the antenna signal, not the composite, so it can't capture anything from satellite or cable boxes plugged into it. Obviously, that's more of an issue with Videolan, and hopefully it'll work some day soon, but if you wanted to use Videolan with a tv tuner card, it's something you might want to consider.
That's not to say the AIW is bad, and for the price I paid I'm generally happy with it. It does do the job. Usually. But if I had more money, I would definitely have gone for a seperate tv tuner. If nothing else, it's more flexible - you can upgrade the graphics card without worrying about the tv tuner card at the same time.
Having 3d graphics is not going to suddenly transform a cellphone into a gaming device to be desired.
It's not just the screen size, it's the controls. People like cellphones to be small. But they like to have controls big enough to hold and use. The two are mutually incompatible. And if you have a seperate gamepad, you might as well have a seperate gaming device.
That's not to say that having 3d graphics won't improve the games on a cellphone. But in general it's not going to make them anything comparable to those on, well, pretty much any other gaming device.
I had a similar problem in Windows XP. Upgraded to 0.9, tried to install extensions - they flashed up briefly in the extension manager, but then vanished. So I restarted firefox.
Up pops the 'installing extensions' windows. And it just sits there. Had to uninstall and reinstall to get firefox to open again, but extensions still didn't work.
So, I uninstalled Firefox again, moved my Firefox folder, reinstalled, told it to import nothing - and everything works fine. Googlebar, mouse gestures, no problems at all. Then I manually imported my bookmarks, and everything's fine.
What's strange is, it can't have been a conflict with previous installed extensions - I hadn't installed any.
What did you do, type 'rat facts incontinent' or similar into Google? Great research technique!
The fact is, rodents aren't incontinent. Rats do tend to spot in many locations (not everywhere), some rats more than others. But they usually actually go to the toilet (as opposed to the odd scent mark) in specific areas. Some rats will even use a litter tray if one's provided in an appropriate location. Also, males mark more than females, adults more than juveniles. And male marking is greatly reduced by castration. They scent mark, some more than others. They're not incontinent.
Hamsters are also rodents, and don't, I think, even scent mark in that manner - they have scent glands in their hips they use. Clearly rodents. Even more clealy not incontinent.
They're not incontinent. Consider the source of your information (a pest control company). Consider the fact that they can't even get the names of diseases right (it's "weil's" not "wiels"). Check the facts elsewhere. That's a good example of the uninformed opinion I was talking about though.:-)
Besides which, it's not like dolphins get out of the ocean to go.:-)
'The first batch died en route after being accidentally left for two days on a broiling Johannesburg airport tarmac.'
That sort of negligence is something that certainly (in my opinion) merits complaining about. But it's also not something that's inherent to using the rats for mine detection.
It's not remotely unreasonable for someone who doesn't personally want to go and find land mines to express an opinion about using rats to find them. Unless you can demonstrate that it's a clear choice between volunteers or rats. Which of course, it isn't.
So, if you want to post something which holds some semblence of actual reasoning, go ahead. If not: shut up.:-)
Whether dolphins are cute, or rats not, is a matter of opinion. I think it's typically a matter of uninformed opinion, but that's just my opinion.:-)
I personally think rats are cute. I have a exceptionally cute rat sitting on me licking my hand as I'm typing this, so I'd argue that I have some idea of what I'm talking about. They're also intelligent, clean (yes, clean), and they make excellent, and increasingly popular, pets. I have eight myself (not as excessive a number as it might sound - they're social creatures who like company, and looking after multiple rats isn't hugely different from looking after one).
Most people when they've met rats I've had have tended to find them cute, despite some of their initial preconceptions. That's just my experience of course, and if you think rats aren't cute, fine, that's your opinion and you're entitled to it. But I do find it somewhat depressing that the majority of people (and I'm not saying you're one of them) who express that opinion know pretty much nothing about rats. Just shows how easily people in general accept the opinions foisted on them by the society in which they develop I suppose.
Anyway, I'd also argue that whether they're cute or not is irrelevant to this topic, or it should be anyway. 'Animal rights' shouldn't be based on the cuteness of the animal in question, it should be based on the actual facts of the situation in question, and cuteness doesn't really enter into that. In this case, the rats are rewarded for the work, and there's little risk - as the article says, they're too light to set off the mines. So while I care - and as I expect anyone else who is concerned with 'animal rights' and isn't irrationally prejudiced against rats cares - I don't have a problem with using rats for this purpose, so long as they're treated humanely otherwise.
There's two conflicting maxims when it comes to updating systems:
'Always apply the latest updates' and 'If it ain't broke, don't fix it'.
Given that many people are both lazy and ignorant, they like to assume that if it appears to be working, it is, and thus they don't have to update/fix it. I imagine there's a lot of sendmail systems out there unpatched since before 2002. Old news, in terms of serious vulnerabilities, is therefore still highly relevant, since it provides a quick way of pointing and saying: 'Look, it is broken, fix it you lazy muppet'.:-)
Having said that, those are just the 'most recent entries' on the frontpage in relation to date of entry to the database. I think that's useful to have there so you know what's been added since a previous check.
So you can in-game walk the same street as you're walking in-real-life, but only in-game it's packed with action, wheres the in-real-life version is as boring as always.
I don't know about the real-life version being boring - I imagine it'd be quite entertaining to watch hordes of people walking into things and falling over because they were trying to play a game and walk down a street simultaneously (a bad move when many probably haven't yet mastered walking and chewing gum at the same time).
Plenty of scope there for passing away the time Nelson (from the Simpsons) style: Ha-ha!
Or, you could get interactive and try to break their minds by dressing up as characters from the game and confronting them in real life. Now that would be fun!:-)
There is a long tradition of April 1st RFCs - see Wikipedia's entry.
I thought this one was quite funny - note, by the way, that it doesn't propose that every computer be installed with an OP client, it just proposes the requirements for a protocol enabling that. The requirements are impossible. That's kind of the point, I thought. I suppose you'd have to RTFA to get that though...:-)
I agree. I mean, they do things other than physical distribution (production, promotion, etc.), but physical distribution provides a nice way to charge for all that, and make a nice profit on it. And heck, might as well bump up the price a bit just for a bit more profit. Mmmm, profit.
They're totally spannered without being able to charge for that physical distribution though. People don't generally put a high value on advertising. So, they could either accept that there's an alternate form of distribution that costs them and the consumer very little and try to work out a way to charge for the services they do still provide - tricky - or, they could try to prevent that form of distribution and force the consumer to use their alternate, more expensive method. What would you do?
You're right - it's not just a question of competition though, IMO. It's a question of justifying existance. CDs, for example, are generally perceived as being over-priced. This perception is enhanced by the ability to burn cds at home - it's both easy, and it's substantially cheaper. The perceived value of something is reduced when people can do it themselves, and do it cheaper. And when people see something as overpriced, they tend to avoid buying it, or at least buy less of it. People don't like to be ripped off.
But much more so, mp3s can be transferred for free (well, negligible cost). The cost that the RIAA can charge for providing the product therefore plummets - sure, they can justify some cost for marketing, production, etc., but to the consumer those are less tangible things. Without the justification of physical costs, it's hard for them to charge the amount for themselves (as opposed to the artist) that they perhaps think would keep them in the style to which they have become accustomed, without the consumer becoming irate. So given the (perhaps impossible) task of explaining to the consumer why they should continute to give the RIAA large chunks of money, they'd rather just force the consumer to keep on doing it.
If the RIAA were book publishers, they'd no doubt print all books in super-deluxe hardback and prosecute photocopiers.
I'm not arguing either way here, but if the second is of exactly the same quality as the original, then yes, everyone would use a duplicator. Well, a few extremely rich people might buy hand-built ones just to say they did...
Not necessarily! Quality isn't the only factor. There's also relative convenience, relative cost (a duplicate will always cost something, if not necessarily up-front cash), not to mention morality. People will be more likely to pay for something if they have to, or if it's easier, or if they think they should. People will be less likely to pay for something if they don't think it's worth it, or if they can't afford it.
As an aside, in this specific car example, if a duplicate was indeed exactly the same quality and was much cheaper to produce than the original, then the manufacturer would use duplication as part of the production process, thus bringing down the cost difference. Which is another point where the analogy maybe falls over a bit. But hey, it wasn't my analogy.:-)
I'd be interested to know how it works too, and whether it breaks any licensing agreements, etc., relating to the technologies involved. And whether they download the files to check whether they actually exist, and/or they are what they say they are.
And if they do download them, how come that's ok? Do they pay the artist?:-)
A Ferrari duplicator would immediately make the real cars worthless. The manufacturer would then go out of business and have to lay off the designer. The owner would be left with something for which he paid hundreds of thousands of dollars and no resale value.
That assumes that the duplicator costs nothing to operate (which, given that it's a large, expensive, physical object we're talking about, is unlikely). Of course, that highlights the limits of the analogy - a car is not like a cd, both in cost and nature.
Of course, you also assume everyone would use the duplicator rather than buy an original. If the cost (in the full sense of finance, time, etc.) isn't significantly less than the cost of buying an original, then I'd say anyone who wants one and can afford one will still get an original. And if the cost of using the duplicator is significantly cheaper, then that would imply that the original is over-priced. All of which leads to the really interesting question of: what are the implications of someone who couldn't afford an original using the duplicator to get one?
Bilbo wasn't a young hobbit at the time The Hobbit was set, if I recall correctly, and he hadn't aged as much as would normally be expected by the time of The Lord of the Rings due to the effects of the ring. So Ian Holm playing Bilbo again wouldn't be entirely unreasonable.
Anyway, personally, I can't wait for Peter Jackson's version of the Hobbit. 13 Dwarves bumbling around and constantly tripping over themselves sounds great. And I can't wait to see how he's going to work in the dwarf tossing gags!
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You sound confused.
First you say that buying something without knowing what you're paying for is being an irresponsible consumer.
But then you say that downloading them to listen to them via P2P is 'raping and plundering'.
And then you say you now buy all your songs off iTMS or just buy the CD. How do you know what you're buying?
It's not like the graphics cards are going to be pushed to the limit - I mean, the CPU wouldn't cope with them all playing ut2004 at the same time. :-) So they shouldn't be generating all that much heat, couple of case fans should cope with it no problems.
As for the noise, it'll still be quieter than 4 separate boxes.
CERT have suggested using a different browser before (e.g. here).
I wouldn't read too much into it myself though. If one browser has a vulnerability, and another doesn't, surely it's an obvious thing to suggest? And in the past, they've pointed out the potential problems with not using IE (i.e. incompatibilities with IE-dependent sites). More a suggestion than a recommendation I'd say.
I have an ATI Radeon All-In-Wonder 9800SE, and I'm not really all that happy with it on the tv tuner front.
In my experience, the ATI drivers are somewhat buggy and temperamental on Windows, and worse on linux. Also, I'd love to use Videolan, but it's never worked fully with the AIW. The most recent release is actually able to use my AIW, but only the antenna signal, not the composite, so it can't capture anything from satellite or cable boxes plugged into it. Obviously, that's more of an issue with Videolan, and hopefully it'll work some day soon, but if you wanted to use Videolan with a tv tuner card, it's something you might want to consider.
That's not to say the AIW is bad, and for the price I paid I'm generally happy with it. It does do the job. Usually. But if I had more money, I would definitely have gone for a seperate tv tuner. If nothing else, it's more flexible - you can upgrade the graphics card without worrying about the tv tuner card at the same time.
Having 3d graphics is not going to suddenly transform a cellphone into a gaming device to be desired.
It's not just the screen size, it's the controls. People like cellphones to be small. But they like to have controls big enough to hold and use. The two are mutually incompatible. And if you have a seperate gamepad, you might as well have a seperate gaming device.
That's not to say that having 3d graphics won't improve the games on a cellphone. But in general it's not going to make them anything comparable to those on, well, pretty much any other gaming device.
I had a similar problem in Windows XP. Upgraded to 0.9, tried to install extensions - they flashed up briefly in the extension manager, but then vanished. So I restarted firefox.
Up pops the 'installing extensions' windows. And it just sits there. Had to uninstall and reinstall to get firefox to open again, but extensions still didn't work.
So, I uninstalled Firefox again, moved my Firefox folder, reinstalled, told it to import nothing - and everything works fine. Googlebar, mouse gestures, no problems at all. Then I manually imported my bookmarks, and everything's fine.
What's strange is, it can't have been a conflict with previous installed extensions - I hadn't installed any.
I play Nethack on my Sharp Zaurus SL5500.
Screenshots and other info here.
What did you do, type 'rat facts incontinent' or similar into Google? Great research technique!
The fact is, rodents aren't incontinent. Rats do tend to spot in many locations (not everywhere), some rats more than others. But they usually actually go to the toilet (as opposed to the odd scent mark) in specific areas. Some rats will even use a litter tray if one's provided in an appropriate location. Also, males mark more than females, adults more than juveniles. And male marking is greatly reduced by castration. They scent mark, some more than others. They're not incontinent.
Hamsters are also rodents, and don't, I think, even scent mark in that manner - they have scent glands in their hips they use. Clearly rodents. Even more clealy not incontinent.
Rodents aren't incontinent.
They're not incontinent. Consider the source of your information (a pest control company). Consider the fact that they can't even get the names of diseases right (it's "weil's" not "wiels"). Check the facts elsewhere. That's a good example of the uninformed opinion I was talking about though. :-)
:-)
Besides which, it's not like dolphins get out of the ocean to go.
Actually, the article does mention rats dying:
'The first batch died en route after being accidentally left for two days on a broiling Johannesburg airport tarmac.'
That sort of negligence is something that certainly (in my opinion) merits complaining about. But it's also not something that's inherent to using the rats for mine detection.
It's not remotely unreasonable for someone who doesn't personally want to go and find land mines to express an opinion about using rats to find them. Unless you can demonstrate that it's a clear choice between volunteers or rats. Which of course, it isn't.
:-)
So, if you want to post something which holds some semblence of actual reasoning, go ahead. If not: shut up.
If your rats are 6 inches long and weigh 2 pounds, then your rats are seriously overweight.
From what I've read elsewhere, the weight given in the article for giant pouched rats is about right.
Whether dolphins are cute, or rats not, is a matter of opinion. I think it's typically a matter of uninformed opinion, but that's just my opinion. :-)
I personally think rats are cute. I have a exceptionally cute rat sitting on me licking my hand as I'm typing this, so I'd argue that I have some idea of what I'm talking about. They're also intelligent, clean (yes, clean), and they make excellent, and increasingly popular, pets. I have eight myself (not as excessive a number as it might sound - they're social creatures who like company, and looking after multiple rats isn't hugely different from looking after one).
Most people when they've met rats I've had have tended to find them cute, despite some of their initial preconceptions. That's just my experience of course, and if you think rats aren't cute, fine, that's your opinion and you're entitled to it. But I do find it somewhat depressing that the majority of people (and I'm not saying you're one of them) who express that opinion know pretty much nothing about rats. Just shows how easily people in general accept the opinions foisted on them by the society in which they develop I suppose.
Anyway, I'd also argue that whether they're cute or not is irrelevant to this topic, or it should be anyway. 'Animal rights' shouldn't be based on the cuteness of the animal in question, it should be based on the actual facts of the situation in question, and cuteness doesn't really enter into that. In this case, the rats are rewarded for the work, and there's little risk - as the article says, they're too light to set off the mines. So while I care - and as I expect anyone else who is concerned with 'animal rights' and isn't irrationally prejudiced against rats cares - I don't have a problem with using rats for this purpose, so long as they're treated humanely otherwise.
There's two conflicting maxims when it comes to updating systems:
'Always apply the latest updates' and 'If it ain't broke, don't fix it'.
Given that many people are both lazy and ignorant, they like to assume that if it appears to be working, it is, and thus they don't have to update/fix it. I imagine there's a lot of sendmail systems out there unpatched since before 2002. Old news, in terms of serious vulnerabilities, is therefore still highly relevant, since it provides a quick way of pointing and saying: 'Look, it is broken, fix it you lazy muppet'. :-)
Having said that, those are just the 'most recent entries' on the frontpage in relation to date of entry to the database. I think that's useful to have there so you know what's been added since a previous check.
I don't know about the real-life version being boring - I imagine it'd be quite entertaining to watch hordes of people walking into things and falling over because they were trying to play a game and walk down a street simultaneously (a bad move when many probably haven't yet mastered walking and chewing gum at the same time).
Plenty of scope there for passing away the time Nelson (from the Simpsons) style: Ha-ha!
Or, you could get interactive and try to break their minds by dressing up as characters from the game and confronting them in real life. Now that would be fun! :-)
There is a long tradition of April 1st RFCs - see Wikipedia's entry.
I thought this one was quite funny - note, by the way, that it doesn't propose that every computer be installed with an OP client, it just proposes the requirements for a protocol enabling that. The requirements are impossible. That's kind of the point, I thought. I suppose you'd have to RTFA to get that though... :-)
I agree. I mean, they do things other than physical distribution (production, promotion, etc.), but physical distribution provides a nice way to charge for all that, and make a nice profit on it. And heck, might as well bump up the price a bit just for a bit more profit. Mmmm, profit.
They're totally spannered without being able to charge for that physical distribution though. People don't generally put a high value on advertising. So, they could either accept that there's an alternate form of distribution that costs them and the consumer very little and try to work out a way to charge for the services they do still provide - tricky - or, they could try to prevent that form of distribution and force the consumer to use their alternate, more expensive method. What would you do?
You're right - it's not just a question of competition though, IMO. It's a question of justifying existance. CDs, for example, are generally perceived as being over-priced. This perception is enhanced by the ability to burn cds at home - it's both easy, and it's substantially cheaper. The perceived value of something is reduced when people can do it themselves, and do it cheaper. And when people see something as overpriced, they tend to avoid buying it, or at least buy less of it. People don't like to be ripped off.
But much more so, mp3s can be transferred for free (well, negligible cost). The cost that the RIAA can charge for providing the product therefore plummets - sure, they can justify some cost for marketing, production, etc., but to the consumer those are less tangible things. Without the justification of physical costs, it's hard for them to charge the amount for themselves (as opposed to the artist) that they perhaps think would keep them in the style to which they have become accustomed, without the consumer becoming irate. So given the (perhaps impossible) task of explaining to the consumer why they should continute to give the RIAA large chunks of money, they'd rather just force the consumer to keep on doing it.
If the RIAA were book publishers, they'd no doubt print all books in super-deluxe hardback and prosecute photocopiers.
Not necessarily! Quality isn't the only factor. There's also relative convenience, relative cost (a duplicate will always cost something, if not necessarily up-front cash), not to mention morality. People will be more likely to pay for something if they have to, or if it's easier, or if they think they should. People will be less likely to pay for something if they don't think it's worth it, or if they can't afford it.
As an aside, in this specific car example, if a duplicate was indeed exactly the same quality and was much cheaper to produce than the original, then the manufacturer would use duplication as part of the production process, thus bringing down the cost difference. Which is another point where the analogy maybe falls over a bit. But hey, it wasn't my analogy. :-)
I'd be interested to know how it works too, and whether it breaks any licensing agreements, etc., relating to the technologies involved. And whether they download the files to check whether they actually exist, and/or they are what they say they are.
And if they do download them, how come that's ok? Do they pay the artist? :-)
That assumes that the duplicator costs nothing to operate (which, given that it's a large, expensive, physical object we're talking about, is unlikely). Of course, that highlights the limits of the analogy - a car is not like a cd, both in cost and nature.
Of course, you also assume everyone would use the duplicator rather than buy an original. If the cost (in the full sense of finance, time, etc.) isn't significantly less than the cost of buying an original, then I'd say anyone who wants one and can afford one will still get an original. And if the cost of using the duplicator is significantly cheaper, then that would imply that the original is over-priced. All of which leads to the really interesting question of: what are the implications of someone who couldn't afford an original using the duplicator to get one?
Bilbo wasn't a young hobbit at the time The Hobbit was set, if I recall correctly, and he hadn't aged as much as would normally be expected by the time of The Lord of the Rings due to the effects of the ring. So Ian Holm playing Bilbo again wouldn't be entirely unreasonable.
Anyway, personally, I can't wait for Peter Jackson's version of the Hobbit. 13 Dwarves bumbling around and constantly tripping over themselves sounds great. And I can't wait to see how he's going to work in the dwarf tossing gags!
No, what you missed was the point... :-)