I'm sure of the hackers here will be able to whip up an App for the popular phones (S60, WM6, iphone), or better yet hard-hack a micro casette recorder into a phone.
Go to the next tier? yeah, thats playing right into the hands of AT&T. I'm billed by the second and i still get pissed off that I have to pay to listen to some recording that hasn't changed in 4 years.
You seem to be supporting the Big American Telco's mantra that prepaid = for poor people and kids who can't control their spending. I was in the good ole US of A a while ago and it seemed like the T-mobile staffers job was to laugh at me first when I told them I had a pre-paid sim, tried to sign me up to a contract after telling them I would only be there for two weeks.
Back home I get 60 minutes a month, you might think thats crazy but it isn't really. I got a Nokia E63 (unlocked and debranded, a rarity for phones in the US) and make most of my calls using the phone's built in SIP client (if you buy the E63 through a carrier, that SIP client is likely to be removed)
But there is no doubt it is a huge earner for the networks. Here in Ireland, and even on Skype now you often have to pay something like 5c as soon as the phone is answered, this includes getting someones voicemail. I never leave a message, I have listened to my own messages being played back at someone elses house and just didn't like it. I prefer to call back or send a SMS.
The worst has to be getting someone's voicemail when calling from a satellite phone, 75c down the drain for nothing. Really wish there was a 5 second chance for you to hang up and not get charged, or better still abolish voicemail altogether. Let people run their own answering machines if they desire but ban voicemail
Not E85, but E100 in purpose built engines is where it's at. Burning ethanol in an engine that can also burn petrol does reduce performance but ethanol doesn't hold quite as much energy as petrol so while the actual volume of liquid consumed is larger, the amount of energy stays the same or decreases
But that doesn't mean this type of biofuel production should be dismissed completely. Of course the best types of biofuel are those that turn an otherwise worthless waste product (like fish oil) into something usable. Even with the conversion of only waste-product to biofuels there should be more than enough fuel to run the world's chainsaws so future generations of kids can play Doom II the same way we did. Maybe a fair few diesel generators, farm equipment and a few lawnmowers (get off my lawn!) can also run off the stuff.
What's also needed is the production of single cylinder ethanol-only engines, these are much more efficient than the E85 ones you see around. With the low over-all volume of fuel these things consume it doesn't even matter if ethanol is a bit more expensive than ordinary gaz. Once we got good ultracapacitors and lithium titanate batteries electric cars will become feasible for most people but electric tractors and HGV's are a long way off, so better off trying to save the biofuels for those kind of machines.
Btw electric chainsaws and lawnmowers suck immeasurably compared to their gaz-powered counterparts but that has a lot to do with the effective 3kW limit placed on household electric motors. I'm sure there is quite a negative environmental impact associated with bringing three-phase to everyone's house especially in the countryside where it would be needed most.
These days you are encouraged to lock down your AP as much as possible so that Vodafone makes more money. I wish there was something like wifi with about a mile range and affordable AP's
True, it works both ways - as one revenue source dries up the other starts looking more attractive that's why it's like a continuous sine wave. subscriptions will go up in price and people will get "sick of this shit" and go to sites with minimal advertising.
Right now advertising-based is on the way up still, but not too far away from its peak. of course those totally against subscription services or cant pay will be stuck with the horrible, ad ridden internet experience for a while until things start to go in their favour again
Than to be getting all my news through Google and the likes who need to fill the page with advertising and do all sorts of data-mining to make their venture worthwhile. If paying a small amount would replace all advertisement and data-mining I'd be happy with that.
There is a certain limit to how much content can be supported by advertising, after that advertising becomes increasingly pervasive in order to keep up the same revenue stream and after that advertising alone won't bring in enough revenue to keep some businesses afloat. These businesses might be the ones that spend a lot on procuring high-quality content and will either be forced to join the sea of other copy-cat news sites that re-write other articles and use twitter as a primary source.
The way I see it there is a trend towards ad-based stuff and then back to subscription before the ad-based services pick up again. There is only so much money being spent on web-based advertising and it has to be split among all the people who provide ad-based services, so as soon as the revenue drops to the required amount to keep these people in business a lot of them will fold, increasing the revenue for those who made it through the bubble so the cycle can start all over again
Would it not be better to use a compiled, binary version of CSS for this sort of thing to reduce the overhead. I know its fashionable these days to do everything over HTTP and inside a browser but it's just a fad. Everybody knows it sucks from a design / efficiency point of view (unless you are an expensive coffee drinking, iPhone toting meeja student with messy hair who lives in a big city).
I'm not going to waste my time writing a detailed rant about why you shouldn't use a freaking browser rendering engine to draw your GUI for you because thanks to the openness of Linux I will just be able to load one of 10's of other, infinitely faster window managers. KDE4 has already become far too bloated and unresponsive for my liking and it looks like GNOME will be next, maybe XFCE after that but other minimalist window managers will be created to fill the niche left behind by those who fell victim to the awful disease that is feature creep.
I have nothing against features that are actually useful, but this is just extra fluff we don't need
Ever since the good ole days of CD-R I used to burn them to find they didn't really work after a couple of months. I actually think all optical media is like that - you burn it, should last for a few weeks after that it's hit or miss. Pressed CD's seem to last forever but not anything you burn yourself
After all it seems the only reliable storage is flash memory, preferably SLC
Well to answer the question I find it ridiculous that after years of upgrading to the latest Pentium or Core processor we decide to make the internet connection the new bottleneck and waste copious amounts of bandwidth running something on a remote server hundreds of miles away that would run far better locally. Using a browser to display a GUI also isn't the most efficient for anything other than the simplest of GUI's.
The convenience of having all your stuff accessible can be far better replicated using a rsync type protocol and file-browser interface built into an application but nobody has done that yet. then there is reliability and privacy issues of having everything on a remote server run by a big company with an EULA and a manager who is only too happy to help out the local Law enforcement agencies
.. as the horrible language that is JavaScript is extended ever more to try and emulate real desktop applications (and more pervasive advertising).
Mang, sometimes I wish I could still get by with a browser that doesn't support JS at all, but web devs insist on building websites that absolutely require JS. For example the free SMS service for my mobile phone network (Meteor) absolutely won't work with JS disabled.
If it wasn't for the required internet connectivity google could go off the grid completely. But they already own so much fibre and the public internet seems to need google more than they need it.
Soon they will generate all their own power from wind and solar, convert all their employees shit to power so they don't need the sewerage system either, send all their traffic through the network of low earth orbit satellites they are about to launch which also conveniently beam solar power back down to them.
So basically at the end of the day they will be able to buy or swindle a plot of land from some country with low tax, bring in all their own employees, contribute absolutely nothing to the local economy and leave when the sun goes down. It's great really, saves them on lawyers that would otherwise help them pussyfoot through the swaths of modern over-regulation and the satellites will help them get past any censorship / connectivity problems.
And if China start shooting down their satellites, Google will make satellites that shoot back
you do realise that Chrome/Android are just pushing platforms for Google's Web services (and therefore AdWords) and the fact that they use the Linux kernel is just a minor technical detail since most of these devices will be too locked down to even get a bash session running without a day's worth of jailbreaking and (in the case of Android) unlocking.
Well this sure beats HTML+HTTP and Javascript for displaying remote applications. Web browsers are horribly inefficient for running remote applications and its good to know somebody is working on a replacement
Of course the obvious problem with this is finding a way to block the ads running in a remote application. Maybe not if they always appear in the same places, but knowing Google I doubt they will.
I'd block them too. In fact the practice of blocking google analytics isn't unheard of at all outside of China. It only wastes bandwidth and google/site owners have too much information on your surfing habits already. All these statistics/advertising things just slow shit down and don't really do anything for you.
well look after your batteries better then. I only 'lost' about 6 of them since i started using rechargeable batteries about 15 years ago. Sure some went bad and i got rid of them but I still have some from 'de good old days'.
and now I can't find the fucking spare battery for my olympus e-500
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I'm sure of the hackers here will be able to whip up an App for the popular phones (S60, WM6, iphone), or better yet hard-hack a micro casette recorder into a phone.
Go to the next tier? yeah, thats playing right into the hands of AT&T. I'm billed by the second and i still get pissed off that I have to pay to listen to some recording that hasn't changed in 4 years.
You seem to be supporting the Big American Telco's mantra that prepaid = for poor people and kids who can't control their spending. I was in the good ole US of A a while ago and it seemed like the T-mobile staffers job was to laugh at me first when I told them I had a pre-paid sim, tried to sign me up to a contract after telling them I would only be there for two weeks.
Back home I get 60 minutes a month, you might think thats crazy but it isn't really. I got a Nokia E63 (unlocked and debranded, a rarity for phones in the US) and make most of my calls using the phone's built in SIP client (if you buy the E63 through a carrier, that SIP client is likely to be removed)
But there is no doubt it is a huge earner for the networks. Here in Ireland, and even on Skype now you often have to pay something like 5c as soon as the phone is answered, this includes getting someones voicemail. I never leave a message, I have listened to my own messages being played back at someone elses house and just didn't like it. I prefer to call back or send a SMS.
The worst has to be getting someone's voicemail when calling from a satellite phone, 75c down the drain for nothing. Really wish there was a 5 second chance for you to hang up and not get charged, or better still abolish voicemail altogether. Let people run their own answering machines if they desire but ban voicemail
"Neuken in de keuken" does not mean any of the things listed there :)
a bomb disposal robot is still a robot isn't it? and most of those are remote-controlled
Except this time you'll look even more stupid wearing it
Not E85, but E100 in purpose built engines is where it's at. Burning ethanol in an engine that can also burn petrol does reduce performance but ethanol doesn't hold quite as much energy as petrol so while the actual volume of liquid consumed is larger, the amount of energy stays the same or decreases
But that doesn't mean this type of biofuel production should be dismissed completely. Of course the best types of biofuel are those that turn an otherwise worthless waste product (like fish oil) into something usable. Even with the conversion of only waste-product to biofuels there should be more than enough fuel to run the world's chainsaws so future generations of kids can play Doom II the same way we did. Maybe a fair few diesel generators, farm equipment and a few lawnmowers (get off my lawn!) can also run off the stuff.
What's also needed is the production of single cylinder ethanol-only engines, these are much more efficient than the E85 ones you see around. With the low over-all volume of fuel these things consume it doesn't even matter if ethanol is a bit more expensive than ordinary gaz. Once we got good ultracapacitors and lithium titanate batteries electric cars will become feasible for most people but electric tractors and HGV's are a long way off, so better off trying to save the biofuels for those kind of machines.
Btw electric chainsaws and lawnmowers suck immeasurably compared to their gaz-powered counterparts but that has a lot to do with the effective 3kW limit placed on household electric motors. I'm sure there is quite a negative environmental impact associated with bringing three-phase to everyone's house especially in the countryside where it would be needed most.
shows users a webpage and asks them to figure out a search query that should produce the page within the first 5 results
How much am I being paid? I suppose it is recession after all..
These days you are encouraged to lock down your AP as much as possible so that Vodafone makes more money. I wish there was something like wifi with about a mile range and affordable AP's
True, it works both ways - as one revenue source dries up the other starts looking more attractive that's why it's like a continuous sine wave. subscriptions will go up in price and people will get "sick of this shit" and go to sites with minimal advertising.
Right now advertising-based is on the way up still, but not too far away from its peak. of course those totally against subscription services or cant pay will be stuck with the horrible, ad ridden internet experience for a while until things start to go in their favour again
Than to be getting all my news through Google and the likes who need to fill the page with advertising and do all sorts of data-mining to make their venture worthwhile. If paying a small amount would replace all advertisement and data-mining I'd be happy with that.
There is a certain limit to how much content can be supported by advertising, after that advertising becomes increasingly pervasive in order to keep up the same revenue stream and after that advertising alone won't bring in enough revenue to keep some businesses afloat. These businesses might be the ones that spend a lot on procuring high-quality content and will either be forced to join the sea of other copy-cat news sites that re-write other articles and use twitter as a primary source.
The way I see it there is a trend towards ad-based stuff and then back to subscription before the ad-based services pick up again. There is only so much money being spent on web-based advertising and it has to be split among all the people who provide ad-based services, so as soon as the revenue drops to the required amount to keep these people in business a lot of them will fold, increasing the revenue for those who made it through the bubble so the cycle can start all over again
Would it not be better to use a compiled, binary version of CSS for this sort of thing to reduce the overhead. I know its fashionable these days to do everything over HTTP and inside a browser but it's just a fad. Everybody knows it sucks from a design / efficiency point of view (unless you are an expensive coffee drinking, iPhone toting meeja student with messy hair who lives in a big city).
I'm not going to waste my time writing a detailed rant about why you shouldn't use a freaking browser rendering engine to draw your GUI for you because thanks to the openness of Linux I will just be able to load one of 10's of other, infinitely faster window managers. KDE4 has already become far too bloated and unresponsive for my liking and it looks like GNOME will be next, maybe XFCE after that but other minimalist window managers will be created to fill the niche left behind by those who fell victim to the awful disease that is feature creep.
I have nothing against features that are actually useful, but this is just extra fluff we don't need
Make more copies onto something more reliable or else you'll never get around to doing anything other than making copies
Ever since the good ole days of CD-R I used to burn them to find they didn't really work after a couple of months. I actually think all optical media is like that - you burn it, should last for a few weeks after that it's hit or miss. Pressed CD's seem to last forever but not anything you burn yourself
After all it seems the only reliable storage is flash memory, preferably SLC
Well to answer the question I find it ridiculous that after years of upgrading to the latest Pentium or Core processor we decide to make the internet connection the new bottleneck and waste copious amounts of bandwidth running something on a remote server hundreds of miles away that would run far better locally. Using a browser to display a GUI also isn't the most efficient for anything other than the simplest of GUI's.
The convenience of having all your stuff accessible can be far better replicated using a rsync type protocol and file-browser interface built into an application but nobody has done that yet. then there is reliability and privacy issues of having everything on a remote server run by a big company with an EULA and a manager who is only too happy to help out the local Law enforcement agencies
.. as the horrible language that is JavaScript is extended ever more to try and emulate real desktop applications (and more pervasive advertising).
Mang, sometimes I wish I could still get by with a browser that doesn't support JS at all, but web devs insist on building websites that absolutely require JS. For example the free SMS service for my mobile phone network (Meteor) absolutely won't work with JS disabled.
Do want!
They've done cloud computing, so cloud seeding should be a piece of cake
If it wasn't for the required internet connectivity google could go off the grid completely. But they already own so much fibre and the public internet seems to need google more than they need it.
Soon they will generate all their own power from wind and solar, convert all their employees shit to power so they don't need the sewerage system either, send all their traffic through the network of low earth orbit satellites they are about to launch which also conveniently beam solar power back down to them.
So basically at the end of the day they will be able to buy or swindle a plot of land from some country with low tax, bring in all their own employees, contribute absolutely nothing to the local economy and leave when the sun goes down. It's great really, saves them on lawyers that would otherwise help them pussyfoot through the swaths of modern over-regulation and the satellites will help them get past any censorship / connectivity problems.
And if China start shooting down their satellites, Google will make satellites that shoot back
I made one with nothing but a D-cell battery holder and the lead off an old charger. far too easy http://pineapple.vg/?op=comments&query=20090416-01.txt
you do realise that Chrome/Android are just pushing platforms for Google's Web services (and therefore AdWords) and the fact that they use the Linux kernel is just a minor technical detail since most of these devices will be too locked down to even get a bash session running without a day's worth of jailbreaking and (in the case of Android) unlocking.
Well this sure beats HTML+HTTP and Javascript for displaying remote applications. Web browsers are horribly inefficient for running remote applications and its good to know somebody is working on a replacement
Of course the obvious problem with this is finding a way to block the ads running in a remote application. Maybe not if they always appear in the same places, but knowing Google I doubt they will.
I'd block them too. In fact the practice of blocking google analytics isn't unheard of at all outside of China. It only wastes bandwidth and google/site owners have too much information on your surfing habits already. All these statistics/advertising things just slow shit down and don't really do anything for you.
well look after your batteries better then. I only 'lost' about 6 of them since i started using rechargeable batteries about 15 years ago. Sure some went bad and i got rid of them but I still have some from 'de good old days'. and now I can't find the fucking spare battery for my olympus e-500