I use Vonage and love it... I have a virtual phone number based in Toronto that my family can call and it forwards to Los Angeles at no extra charge. On top of that, the feature to forward to another phone number (ie: my cell phone) for free if I'm not home to answer it there, is well worth the price.
Between the cell phone and Vonage, I have no need for a land-based phone line any more to talk to my family up north. Cingular charges me $0.69/minute to call Canada, so I just call my family and say "hey, call me back on my Toronto number" and wait for my cell phone to ring.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but IM services *generally* connect directly peer-to-peer, unless the user is not online in which case messages may be queued up (ICQ, Yahoo IM) for when the user comes back online. Otherwise, if the user is online, the TCP packet is sent directly to the user's system.
With Email, you have numerous connections, the overhead of speaking both SMTP and POP3 protocols to store/send and retrieve Email, and each message hops from one server to the other and waits for the user's client software to retrieve the message. How exactly does that speed things up?
Re:Wanted: a few billion algae to help me move
on
Algae Can Carry Cargo
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· Score: 1
Whoa, two/.'ers getting married on the same day, that's spooky. An omen, perhaps.;o)
Congrats to you as well.
Re:Wanted: a few billion algae to help me move
on
Algae Can Carry Cargo
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· Score: 2, Informative
we knew to hang on to the only one that ever said yes
I've always wondered about copyright issues with services like this. Questions were raised, I'm sure, when Amazon started doing their "look inside" service, although I'm pretty sure the text they've scanned is not searchable. Quite a difference from what Google is attempting.
It will be interesting to see which titles will be available through it once Google Print is ready for prime-time use.
Perhaps read my followup... I didn't explain myself clearly enough in my original posting. I never write code to look 'impressive' (nor did I say or imply that in my original post) - there's nothing to gain by that...
The point that obviously didn't come across well was that sometimes these books cause people to write inefficient code because of the simplistic approach they take in an effort to learn something quickly. And if the book becomes popular, then they've just trained people to write huge amounts of simply-written code, that while it looks okay and runs and operates as intended, may not be the best way of doing things (read my strstr and regexp analogy in my followup).
Okay, so I suppose I should have re-read my post before hitting submit... my bad.
What I truly *meant* was: so many people out there are writing very basic-looking code, that, while it works, it's not optimal. It's not as efficient as it *could* be, and in my experience, writing more efficient code, especially code that's "hardened" or more secure, takes more advanced programming skills than a lot of the code I see out there. So, learning complex ideas, which you may NOT learn in these "learn ___ quickly" type of books, sometimes only comes from principles you've learned while writing in other languages. "Looking" more advanced, which I admit was poorly written in my original post, doesn't mean purposely obfuscating code for any kind of job security, but sometimes it's more efficient to write it in one way than another.
Take regular expressions for example... you could write 100 lines of PHP code to do strstr() calls in a giant if/elseif/elseif/elseif block to detect a string match in a block of data, or you could do a few lines of an ereg_* or preg_* call in PHP that "new" PHP programmers maybe wouldn't know about. If I didn't know Perl well enough to know regexp's, then I wouldn't have known that an ereg_ or preg_ call in PHP would do the same, and 5 or 6 years ago, *I'd* have been that guy writing 100 lines of strstr() calls to do what a single function could perform. Today, I work at taking someone else's 100 lines of code and reduce it to a much shorter block of more efficient code, using more advanced skills.
And based on conversations I've had with other people, yeah, many people do find Perl a little more difficult to learn with some of its cryptic syntax.
Sorry for the confusion of my previous post, and thanks for the laughs I've had over other people flaming my trigger-happy 'submit' skills.
Funny, I just spent 4 months rewriting some code written in PHP 3 (which only a few years old) 'cause it wouldn't work 100% of the time on the new hosting server they needed to move the application to, 'cause the dope(s) that wrote the original software wrote it in such a way that PHP4 choked on it far too often (mostly with the register_globals or other such things being turned off/on).
In the end, they have a much more secure application that also runs a lot quicker... and since cutting out function calls that will be removed once v5 hits the mainstream, less likely to break down again in the near future.
Exactly... I've had more freelance projects to fix or alter other people's code than to write stuff from scratch. And I'm happy to do it: it's usually a long task, and I charge per hour.
And the quality of writing something from scratch, correctly, the first time, is way more valuable to someone, than some high school script kiddie that thinks he's "1337" for cutting and pasting someone else's ideas together as a band-aid solution to a problem.
And now, at my current job, I get assignments like "rewrite 90% of this code to make it more efficient" where someone threw something together that, while functional, isn't the most efficient way of doing something.
... but it's hard to be considered an 'expert' in a simple language like PHP when everyone and their uncle is writing in it and claims they're also an expert.
So I always try to learn the more complex ideas around the language or bring in ideas from Perl or C to my PHP code to make it look more advanced... so I tend to stay away from "learn ___ quickly" books -- I already know the basics of a lot of different languages and products, I want the more advanced stuff.
Here at work, just about every one of our developers can code in PHP... Perl is a different story, and I guess that's why I make the big(ger) bucks.
I beg to differ. I researched a handful of manufacturers that support ogg, and ultimately settled on iRiver and got an H320 player, 20GB model. And being that ogg files are smaller than mp3 at a comparable bitrate, it's pretty slick.
I use gentoo 2005.0, and have used gentoo since one of their 2003 releases. Did that make me a linux expert? No. Using about a dozen different distros since the early 90's has sure helped though!
I agree that following a step-by-step list of instructions to install something does not make someone an expert. Heck, I can buy something in a box from IKEA, assemble it per their instructions, and have a functional piece of furniture, but that hardly makes me a furniture craftsman "expert".
Of course, if the user goes through the installation walk-through and checks other command line options, and WHY things happen in a certain order, then of *course* it will make a HUGE difference on the skill level they end up with.
So I don't use gentoo for the "prestige" of saying "I use an OS I compiled from source", I use gentoo 'cause it's a comfortable distro for me, it's nice and fast for what I need, it supports all of the hardware I currently need it for, and that's that.
Slashdot Mirror
guess that rules out heading to Mexico either
I use Vonage and love it ... I have a virtual phone number based in Toronto that my family can call and it forwards to Los Angeles at no extra charge. On top of that, the feature to forward to another phone number (ie: my cell phone) for free if I'm not home to answer it there, is well worth the price.
Between the cell phone and Vonage, I have no need for a land-based phone line any more to talk to my family up north. Cingular charges me $0.69/minute to call Canada, so I just call my family and say "hey, call me back on my Toronto number" and wait for my cell phone to ring.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but IM services *generally* connect directly peer-to-peer, unless the user is not online in which case messages may be queued up (ICQ, Yahoo IM) for when the user comes back online. Otherwise, if the user is online, the TCP packet is sent directly to the user's system.
With Email, you have numerous connections, the overhead of speaking both SMTP and POP3 protocols to store/send and retrieve Email, and each message hops from one server to the other and waits for the user's client software to retrieve the message. How exactly does that speed things up?
Congrats to you as well.
Top Reasons to Date a Geek
I'm getting married Sept 17th and will need help moving furniture and boxes of geek books...
Redmond,WA expects us to ... Maybe Larry just took a page from Microsoft's book?
surely you mean C-SPAN ?
a lottery is just a tax on people that are really bad at math...
Personally, I'm willing to buy a case made out of any kind of material if it'll be quiet enough... my regular steel case is too loud at night.
Well, political correctness sure dictated which books got taken OUT of libraries ...
It will be interesting to see which titles will be available through it once Google Print is ready for prime-time use.
Oh, the sweet, sweet irony, of publishing a paper book about talk radio.
The point that obviously didn't come across well was that sometimes these books cause people to write inefficient code because of the simplistic approach they take in an effort to learn something quickly. And if the book becomes popular, then they've just trained people to write huge amounts of simply-written code, that while it looks okay and runs and operates as intended, may not be the best way of doing things (read my strstr and regexp analogy in my followup).
What I truly *meant* was: so many people out there are writing very basic-looking code, that, while it works, it's not optimal. It's not as efficient as it *could* be, and in my experience, writing more efficient code, especially code that's "hardened" or more secure, takes more advanced programming skills than a lot of the code I see out there. So, learning complex ideas, which you may NOT learn in these "learn ___ quickly" type of books, sometimes only comes from principles you've learned while writing in other languages. "Looking" more advanced, which I admit was poorly written in my original post, doesn't mean purposely obfuscating code for any kind of job security, but sometimes it's more efficient to write it in one way than another.
Take regular expressions for example... you could write 100 lines of PHP code to do strstr() calls in a giant if/elseif/elseif/elseif block to detect a string match in a block of data, or you could do a few lines of an ereg_* or preg_* call in PHP that "new" PHP programmers maybe wouldn't know about. If I didn't know Perl well enough to know regexp's, then I wouldn't have known that an ereg_ or preg_ call in PHP would do the same, and 5 or 6 years ago, *I'd* have been that guy writing 100 lines of strstr() calls to do what a single function could perform. Today, I work at taking someone else's 100 lines of code and reduce it to a much shorter block of more efficient code, using more advanced skills.
And based on conversations I've had with other people, yeah, many people do find Perl a little more difficult to learn with some of its cryptic syntax.
Sorry for the confusion of my previous post, and thanks for the laughs I've had over other people flaming my trigger-happy 'submit' skills.
Funny, I just spent 4 months rewriting some code written in PHP 3 (which only a few years old) 'cause it wouldn't work 100% of the time on the new hosting server they needed to move the application to, 'cause the dope(s) that wrote the original software wrote it in such a way that PHP4 choked on it far too often (mostly with the register_globals or other such things being turned off/on).
In the end, they have a much more secure application that also runs a lot quicker... and since cutting out function calls that will be removed once v5 hits the mainstream, less likely to break down again in the near future.
<?php include ("mytwocents.php") ?>
And the quality of writing something from scratch, correctly, the first time, is way more valuable to someone, than some high school script kiddie that thinks he's "1337" for cutting and pasting someone else's ideas together as a band-aid solution to a problem.
And now, at my current job, I get assignments like "rewrite 90% of this code to make it more efficient" where someone threw something together that, while functional, isn't the most efficient way of doing something.
So I always try to learn the more complex ideas around the language or bring in ideas from Perl or C to my PHP code to make it look more advanced... so I tend to stay away from "learn ___ quickly" books -- I already know the basics of a lot of different languages and products, I want the more advanced stuff.
Here at work, just about every one of our developers can code in PHP ... Perl is a different story, and I guess that's why I make the big(ger) bucks.
I beg to differ. I researched a handful of manufacturers that support ogg, and ultimately settled on iRiver and got an H320 player, 20GB model. And being that ogg files are smaller than mp3 at a comparable bitrate, it's pretty slick.
I agree that following a step-by-step list of instructions to install something does not make someone an expert. Heck, I can buy something in a box from IKEA, assemble it per their instructions, and have a functional piece of furniture, but that hardly makes me a furniture craftsman "expert".
Of course, if the user goes through the installation walk-through and checks other command line options, and WHY things happen in a certain order, then of *course* it will make a HUGE difference on the skill level they end up with.
So I don't use gentoo for the "prestige" of saying "I use an OS I compiled from source", I use gentoo 'cause it's a comfortable distro for me, it's nice and fast for what I need, it supports all of the hardware I currently need it for, and that's that.
# emerge mytwocents
Yeah maybe, but do you know how much it's gonna cost to keep my entire car wrapped in tinfoil?! :o)
The user reviews are pretty decent, it seems; I suppose they'll answer more of your questions.
What type of linux servers does it teach you to tune?
From TFA:
That is, it should be generic enough to apply to nearly all Linux distros.
Share it? Sure, send this article to a thousand of your friends, and for each one that forward it on to other friends, MS will pay you $1. ;o)