Firefox is the last of the major four browsers to have a separate address bar and search bar. This seems a bit backwards until you realise that Firefox is the *only* browser with advanced instant search of the history. It's a great feature when you get used to it, and it is the reason that I use Firefox. For example, if I want to go back to this page tomorrow, I can write "slash fire" into the address bar, and this page shows up as the top result. Using any other browser, it would take multiple clicks and/or more typing to get back to this page. If I need to access the docs for some specialist library all the time at work , it will show up high, and I can just type "class" to get the list of classes. Or even type the name of a class that I use frequently. This includes my home computer too, where I installed some docs locally because the online version was having trouble. So Firefox brings up results for file:///usr/share/doc/whatever/.... when I type in an appropriate keyword. I have to admit that it's a bit of paranoia too, that it's better to store my history locally, but I think the usefulness is enough by itself, without the fear of the cloud.
I can't imagine (2) being significant at all, as most Linux users will have a Windows license that they got with the computer (or a previous, retired computer). There is another option for being a "cheapskate", because Linux and other open OSes allow you to do more with the HW than in Windows. I would argue that I'm not a cheapskate for running "ZFS on Linux" instead of buying a proprietary storage solution from Oracle for my home, but I suppose there are proprietary alternatives for most of the things that Linux gives you for free.
[...]would be like converging a toaster and a refrigerator
It seems that most household appliances exist to alter the temperature of something. It would be great if the heat from a cooling appliance could do something useful. It obviously wouldn't work to toast bread directly with the cooling ribs, but there may be room for some convergence between appliances, to increase efficiency
In addition to what has been mentioned: smart electricity/gas meters (don't know for a fact that they don't use 3G), remote controlled switches, e.g. for turning on the heating in a cabin.
The summary says it's 100 MByte to 1 Gbit, which is confusing in itself. I think "a few hundred megabytes" is correct. It's impressive to run at that rate continuously with high reliability, but it's nothing compared to Youtube and probably Facebook. If you say a "tweet" takes up 200 bytes including overhead, that's 500 000 tweets per second at 100 MB/s, so maybe even Twitter has to deal with that rate. The requirement for redundancy is probably stricter for the LHC, they have at least triply redundant storage for the original data. The data processing is maybe more demanding for LHC than for big internet companies, as all data are essentially equal, so to do an analysis, all data files have to be accessed (there is more filtering after the trigger, and intermediate files are stored containing reconstructed information).
That's good to hear and all, but it's a bit ironic given my recent experience with getting Dota 2 to work in Wine. First, it took about 2-3 hours getting Steam to run, because of a missing library. Then 3 more hours trying to get Dota to run in Wine or a VM, with no success so far. I'm considering to burn that Windows 8 ISO and play some games this weekend. (It's just a bit curious, it's great that they're working on it)
Well it's nothing compared to the slides. When research is presented in such a xenophobic, childish way, it makes it hard to take it seriously (and this cyber* stuff is potentially very serious) Slashdot, being a news organisation and not a hackers shold be held to a higher standard, though.
There was an article on/. where it was argued that journalists should use more jargon if it helped convey the message. After reading "thousandth of a second" *four* times in the summary, yes, please, just say millisecond!!
I have been buying MP3s from Amazon for some time, I just ordered some CDs instead yesterday. Used CDs are cheaper than MP3 albums in many cases, including shipping, and they have better quality (assuming no defects, still to be determined) -- I'll just rip them to FLAC. So this is only an "upgrade" for people who pirated music or ripped there CDs as 128k or 192k. Anyone ripping CDs in the last 5 years would be stupid to encode in anything but FLAC, unless they only need it on an MP3 player with limited storage.... So I'm not saying I can hear the difference between 256k and uncompressed -- I can't -- but there may be future applications where the extra inaudible information is useful (maybe a current application is experimenting with DJ'ing and mixing songs). Why Amazon aren't providing uncompressed songs confuses me. They could even do 48kHz, which is superior to CD, and also 24 bit (I don't think it's possible to hear anything more than 16 bit, but again, there may be uses for it)
Thanks for bringing those up, I had forgotten about them. I would have modded you up, but.bit and.p2p don't really solve the namespace problem, they just allow a different organisation (or none) to control DNS. Anyway, really cool. Here's a link to.bit, http://dot-bit.org/Main_Page . The.p2p site seems to be down.
There is a great breadth to modern music that can't be quantified as chords and notes. There are many interesting sounds and arrangement in pop music and modern(ish) genres such as house music. Dynamic range compression makes everything "flatter", I'll give them that. Still, they are focussing on only a few parameters, and drawing general conclusions.
Why does everyone have to call it "digital" (digital copies, etc)? Software is digital by definition, including that on CDs and floppies. And if you say it's short for "digital downloads", that doesn't make sense either, as "digital" is a useless qualifier (all downloads are digital).
Gnome3 is good for the people who replace their PC with a tablet because it's easier. Some sources would have it that there's lots of those people. Getting them to contribute code could be a challenge, though.
If you look at the files themselves on the backend, it should be representative (there could be some extra audio tracks, etc). For part of the London Olympic thing, which was 1080i at 50 fps, I got 15.2 GB for 3 and a half hour. 9.6Mbit/s on average. A couple of those streams can be done over a fast connection.
Thinking a bit more about it, it would be much much simpler if yo externalized the key storage, authentication and contact list. Just have people store those things in an encrypted file, and people who want to access it from multiple computers can use Dropbox or something like that. Then for adding contacts, have a challenge/response protocol, requiring a small secret to be communicated out of band.
Slashdot Mirror
Firefox is the last of the major four browsers to have a separate address bar and search bar. This seems a bit backwards until you realise that Firefox is the *only* browser with advanced instant search of the history. It's a great feature when you get used to it, and it is the reason that I use Firefox. For example, if I want to go back to this page tomorrow, I can write "slash fire" into the address bar, and this page shows up as the top result. Using any other browser, it would take multiple clicks and/or more typing to get back to this page. If I need to access the docs for some specialist library all the time at work , it will show up high, and I can just type "class" to get the list of classes. Or even type the name of a class that I use frequently. This includes my home computer too, where I installed some docs locally because the online version was having trouble. So Firefox brings up results for file:///usr/share/doc/whatever/.... when I type in an appropriate keyword. I have to admit that it's a bit of paranoia too, that it's better to store my history locally, but I think the usefulness is enough by itself, without the fear of the cloud.
I can't imagine (2) being significant at all, as most Linux users will have a Windows license that they got with the computer (or a previous, retired computer). There is another option for being a "cheapskate", because Linux and other open OSes allow you to do more with the HW than in Windows. I would argue that I'm not a cheapskate for running "ZFS on Linux" instead of buying a proprietary storage solution from Oracle for my home, but I suppose there are proprietary alternatives for most of the things that Linux gives you for free.
[...]would be like converging a toaster and a refrigerator
It seems that most household appliances exist to alter the temperature of something. It would be great if the heat from a cooling appliance could do something useful. It obviously wouldn't work to toast bread directly with the cooling ribs, but there may be room for some convergence between appliances, to increase efficiency
Oh I forgot, remote controlled road barrier (no, really) .
In addition to what has been mentioned: smart electricity/gas meters (don't know for a fact that they don't use 3G), remote controlled switches, e.g. for turning on the heating in a cabin.
maybe even Twitter has to deal with that rate.
Never mind, guys, still a few orders of magnitude lower (340 M messages/day according to WP)
The summary says it's 100 MByte to 1 Gbit, which is confusing in itself. I think "a few hundred megabytes" is correct. It's impressive to run at that rate continuously with high reliability, but it's nothing compared to Youtube and probably Facebook. If you say a "tweet" takes up 200 bytes including overhead, that's 500 000 tweets per second at 100 MB/s, so maybe even Twitter has to deal with that rate. The requirement for redundancy is probably stricter for the LHC, they have at least triply redundant storage for the original data. The data processing is maybe more demanding for LHC than for big internet companies, as all data are essentially equal, so to do an analysis, all data files have to be accessed (there is more filtering after the trigger, and intermediate files are stored containing reconstructed information).
That's good to hear and all, but it's a bit ironic given my recent experience with getting Dota 2 to work in Wine. First, it took about 2-3 hours getting Steam to run, because of a missing library. Then 3 more hours trying to get Dota to run in Wine or a VM, with no success so far. I'm considering to burn that Windows 8 ISO and play some games this weekend. (It's just a bit curious, it's great that they're working on it)
Well it's nothing compared to the slides. When research is presented in such a xenophobic, childish way, it makes it hard to take it seriously (and this cyber* stuff is potentially very serious) Slashdot, being a news organisation and not a hackers shold be held to a higher standard, though.
There was an article on /. where it was argued that journalists should use more jargon if it helped convey the message. After reading "thousandth of a second" *four* times in the summary, yes, please, just say millisecond!!
For example, create a file [of static] that's 3:14 seconds or whatever the song I want is, name the file "I was born this way",
You could stop there and you'd have a copy of the Gaga song
(just kidding, gaga isn't that bad)
No the purpose of cloud players is to keep track of what users listen to.
Maybe, but also to make more money and lock people in to an "ecosystem".
I have been buying MP3s from Amazon for some time, I just ordered some CDs instead yesterday. Used CDs are cheaper than MP3 albums in many cases, including shipping, and they have better quality (assuming no defects, still to be determined) -- I'll just rip them to FLAC. So this is only an "upgrade" for people who pirated music or ripped there CDs as 128k or 192k. Anyone ripping CDs in the last 5 years would be stupid to encode in anything but FLAC, unless they only need it on an MP3 player with limited storage. ... So I'm not saying I can hear the difference between 256k and uncompressed -- I can't -- but there may be future applications where the extra inaudible information is useful (maybe a current application is experimenting with DJ'ing and mixing songs). Why Amazon aren't providing uncompressed songs confuses me. They could even do 48kHz, which is superior to CD, and also 24 bit (I don't think it's possible to hear anything more than 16 bit, but again, there may be uses for it)
The search in Outlook 2007 and 2010 is certainly better than Thunderbird's search, if that says anything.
Saying I'm an atheist is ok, saying you are stupid because you believe in god is not.
What the hell? Of course it's OK! In fact, you are stupid because you don't think it is.
Thanks for bringing those up, I had forgotten about them. I would have modded you up, but .bit and .p2p don't really solve the namespace problem, they just allow a different organisation (or none) to control DNS. Anyway, really cool. Here's a link to .bit, http://dot-bit.org/Main_Page . The .p2p site seems to be down.
Point taken. I'd like to see examples of analog or quantum software out of curiosity, but they don't even have to exist for you to be right.
There is a great breadth to modern music that can't be quantified as chords and notes. There are many interesting sounds and arrangement in pop music and modern(ish) genres such as house music. Dynamic range compression makes everything "flatter", I'll give them that. Still, they are focussing on only a few parameters, and drawing general conclusions.
You must not have been made to read Thoreau's Civil Disobedience in high school
...or he chose to disobey the teacher
Why does everyone have to call it "digital" (digital copies, etc)? Software is digital by definition, including that on CDs and floppies. And if you say it's short for "digital downloads", that doesn't make sense either, as "digital" is a useless qualifier (all downloads are digital).
Gnome3 is good for the people who replace their PC with a tablet because it's easier. Some sources would have it that there's lots of those people. Getting them to contribute code could be a challenge, though.
If you look at the files themselves on the backend, it should be representative (there could be some extra audio tracks, etc). For part of the London Olympic thing, which was 1080i at 50 fps, I got 15.2 GB for 3 and a half hour. 9.6Mbit/s on average. A couple of those streams can be done over a fast connection.
Apple has done things that are much more hostile to developers on iOS, and it's still a hot platform.
Update FYI: The steam client works, just needed some extra packages. Still waiting for Dota 2 to download.
Thinking a bit more about it, it would be much much simpler if yo externalized the key storage, authentication and contact list. Just have people store those things in an encrypted file, and people who want to access it from multiple computers can use Dropbox or something like that. Then for adding contacts, have a challenge/response protocol, requiring a small secret to be communicated out of band.