This is fail since the various governments have already acknowledged that large numbers of documents on Wikileaks is true establishing them as a reliable source of information...
I was going to upgrade to the 50Mb but they wanted to charge me £50 for someone to come out, disconnect the coax screw connection and connect it to a new modem... something for which I would have to take a day off work to do to be sure of being home during any of the slots they offered... so changed my mind.
Last time I needed my modem replaced (because the old one was OLD and didn't work with the network upgrades for the 50Mb service) they posted me one and told me to fit it myself... and they posted the thing with 3 day shipping causing more delays. I guess they went for the cheap option then since they couldn't charge me because it was their equipment and fault... and I had to argue like hell for compensation for the time I had no service.
Or maybe you (or your ISP) are getting your bits and Bytes mixed up...
A speed of 1.5Mb/s (Mega bits per sec) will give a download speed of around 160kB/s (kilo bytes per second) since there is 8 bits in a byte and normally some overhead...
So if you have a 1.5Mb/s service and get 160kB/s you are in fact getting around 100% of the advertised speed...
Or maybe you already knew this... but the difference between Mbs and kBs is something that a lot of people (customers and ISP support) just don't get...
If they are both ADSL the chances are they are both going to be the same speed as they will both be using the same copper cable and the ISPs will all have very similar upstream connections...
If one is cable and one is ADSL the cable will almost always be faster (unless you are very unlucky), and will always give the specified speed during off peak hours, although very few sites will send data at 20Mbs, a popular torrent (of say a linux distribution) with good seeds will easily hit your speed cap.
I don't know how BT's rollout of fibre-to-cabinet will work out but I suspect it will be very similar to cable speeds...
Always have and always will... probably a side effect of the first games I played being on my rubber keyed ZX Spectrum...
That and I already have enough clutter around my TV without adding a console, and I would have to buy a shiny HD TV (and then pay to get my cable upgraded to HD, and have to find a HD replacement for my tivo, and...)
Yeah this is more or less how I work... graphics card was updated earlier in the year to a good £250ish card.
My current processor is a C2D, but a low end one as it was an emergency replacement with minimal funds after my PSU went smokey-sparky and fried the Pentium D that I had before.
True, but I do still play when I have time... I recently played through Portal and HL2 (inc episodes 1&2) for the umpteenth time (mainly to get some of the achievements they added to steam since the last time) and am looking forward to Portal 2.
The problem is more I still care enough (personal pride) about the system I use to be annoyed if its less than optimal (for the money I am willing to spend at the time).
Yeah but Intel need to label the chips with those 3 things for it to work rather than make up a random number and leave you scrambling around looking for useful info...
I can remember buying my first PC and having to decide between a Pentium 75 (i think) and a 486 DX 100 given my limited budget at the time... in the end I went with the P60 and if IIRC only because it also came with windows95, a mouse and speakers... although I mainly ran in DOS mode to play Tie Fighter...
... overdue for its 2 year processor and motherboard upgrade. It is overdue because when I started to look at what processor met my ideal performance/cost ratio it was impossible to figure out.
I don't have time spare to sit with a spreadsheet and a matrix of 30 different processors to work it out so I won't be upgrading now until something breaks. You lost a sale Intel, and I will have to pay more attention to system requirements of games for a while.
I would guess I am not the only one choosing not to buy because its so unclear...
All those small transactions followed by a refund make a mess of my credit card statement!
Actually I used to take full advantage of that until my credit card company started to phone me about multiple suspicious transactions on my account...
It is a (little) less hassle just to try the free version...
When there are two versions of app available, paid no-ad one and free ad-supported one, the paid one generally has higher ratings (sometimes the difference is really huge, like 5 stars for paid, 3 stars for free)
Or maybe the only people that forked out for the paid version are the people who used the free version and really liked it so bought it then rated the paid version 5. The people that only thought the app was average stuck with the free version and rated it as they saw fit.
Who in their right mind would try a free version of an app, rate it 1 (since it was buggy and crashed a lot) then buy the paid version?
My friend's house is in the country and sits in a natural dip. He can still listen to FM (all be it a little bit hissy at times) on any cheap set without any extra aerials, however he can't listen to DAB at all as he gets about 3 or so seconds of airplay followed by 10 or so seconds of total silence, and this is with a good quality receiver and a roof Ariel.
He also has similar issues with analogue/digital TV, unfortunately they will be turning off the analogue TV soon, so the only way he will be able to watch TV is with satellite dish and multiple set top boxes so there are no fights amongst his late teen children.
And also living quite a few miles from his local telephone exchange he can't get ADSL so no broadband internet so that isn't an option either....
All these things now have a negitive impact on his house value, where as 20 years ago when he bought the place none of these things were important and the isolation was a positive influence on the price.
It's not even that simple... some sites directly compete and have contradictory information....
The example they were using on the BBC News channel...
http://www.lovechips.co.uk/ - (chips = French fries to you odd Americans that can't call anything by its correct name... French fries are a specific type of chip and what you call chips are in fact crisps) run by the Potato Council which is a division of the Agriculture & Horticulture Development Board (a government entity) encourages you to eat MORE chips http://www.nhs.uk/change4life/Pages/Default.aspx is run by the NHS and encourages you to eat LESS chips
(of course the fact that lovechips was featured on BBC means that their click count has gone way up and now are safe from the cuts... before it had fewer than 100 hits a month, and really should have been cut as it has nothing that is useful to voters or the government.
Blocking apps you don't like or don't work the way you think people should use their phones, and only allowing people to buy from one place, lets call it an 'app store'.
The factory reset is only intended to reset the phone to a known working state. It is not intended to wipe the phone of all user information. (Think windows 'upgrade in place' to fix corrupted system files)
The factory reset only resets the OS, basic phone settings and installed apps. It doesn't clear the contents of the installed microSD card (and people would complain if it did) and since the emmc memory is treated the same as the SD card and stores some of the things that were previously stored on the SD card it isn't wiped either. Imagine the complaints from people who had to do a factory reset due to a buggy app / corrupted settings and they lost all their photos, songs, bookmarks etc.
HTC only added the emmc memory in the new phone as a partial SD card replacement because people complained that when your remove/swap the SD card (for a change of mp3 files or more space to store photos for example) in the earlier phones installed apps couldn't access their settings and things like browser bookmarks were gone as well.
The only problem here is that HTC didn't make this clear and didn't provide a way to wipe the emmc (and SD card) memory for people wanting to sell or give away their phones when they get a new one...
digitally transformed into electronic codes, which can then be recognized by a computer program
Fonts (for example) are "digitally transformed into electronic codes", yet they are regularly converted back into pictures that can be displayed on screens or reproduced onto paper. Just because something is coded into something unrecognizable by humans doesn't mean that the process can't be reversed.
Re:in other news, cementing the BP CEO has started
on
Gulf Oil Leak Plugged?
·
· Score: 1
Even despite this they haven't tried to avoid their responsibilities...
so where in that sentance did I say BP weren't liable?
What I was getting at is while they are dealing with the problem the CEO of BP doesn't deserve the witch-hunt that the US press and government are pushing. It was as much the regulators fault (for not properly regulating) as it was the drilling companies.
Also people need to remember that this is an accident. At no time did anyone set out to deliberately sink a rig, kill people or cause an environmental disaster.
Things are different in other parts of the world where US oil companies are contaminating large areas of rainforest with oil extraction techniques that make no attempt to limit pollution of the surrounding area. Google "rainforest oil pollution" if you don't believe me...
Well thats what you get for buying a Russian bride who (and her family) can't speak English...
Re:in other news, cementing the BP CEO has started
on
Gulf Oil Leak Plugged?
·
· Score: 1
Remember the failed drilling operation wasn't actually BP, it was a subcontractor.
Chances are it went something like this...
BP management: Please drill a well and do it soon Contractor management: Sure it will cost x BP management: Ok do it... --- a bit later Contractor driller1: This is going to take longer than management guessed Contractor driller2: Ok we don't want to miss our completion bonus lets cut a few corners, just don't tell BP or management --- a bit later still Contractor driller1: Ohh craaaaap!
Chances are that the BP senior exec had no direct knowledge or influence on the actual drilling operation, beyond specifying the initial contract terms and requirements. Even despite this they haven't tried to avoid their responsibilities...
None of the comparisons are of exactly the same frame. 3 of the 6 images have different times in the corner.
I suspect the writer selected frames so H.264 won, but gave VP8 one win at the end to not seem biased.
Also his 'standard SD encoding test file that I've been using for years' would also be a source of suspicion. It is possible that his source file is already in a format that encodes better into H.264 than it does into VP8. And has already been mentioned here the resolution of the source is quite low for todays HD broadband world...
He used Sorenson Media to encode the files. In all probability they may be just better at setting some of the encoding parameters in the codec they have had longer...
And that was just a quick look. There are possibly other flaws that I haven't noticed yet.
Slashdot Mirror
This is fail since the various governments have already acknowledged that large numbers of documents on Wikileaks is true establishing them as a reliable source of information...
I was going to upgrade to the 50Mb but they wanted to charge me £50 for someone to come out, disconnect the coax screw connection and connect it to a new modem... something for which I would have to take a day off work to do to be sure of being home during any of the slots they offered... so changed my mind.
Last time I needed my modem replaced (because the old one was OLD and didn't work with the network upgrades for the 50Mb service) they posted me one and told me to fit it myself... and they posted the thing with 3 day shipping causing more delays. I guess they went for the cheap option then since they couldn't charge me because it was their equipment and fault... and I had to argue like hell for compensation for the time I had no service.
Or maybe you (or your ISP) are getting your bits and Bytes mixed up...
A speed of 1.5Mb/s (Mega bits per sec) will give a download speed of around 160kB/s (kilo bytes per second) since there is 8 bits in a byte and normally some overhead...
So if you have a 1.5Mb/s service and get 160kB/s you are in fact getting around 100% of the advertised speed...
Or maybe you already knew this... but the difference between Mbs and kBs is something that a lot of people (customers and ISP support) just don't get...
http://speedtest.net/global.php#0 is useful... but you need to drill down to your local area and ignore datacentre ISPs...
In the UK at least...
If they are both ADSL the chances are they are both going to be the same speed as they will both be using the same copper cable and the ISPs will all have very similar upstream connections...
If one is cable and one is ADSL the cable will almost always be faster (unless you are very unlucky), and will always give the specified speed during off peak hours, although very few sites will send data at 20Mbs, a popular torrent (of say a linux distribution) with good seeds will easily hit your speed cap.
I don't know how BT's rollout of fibre-to-cabinet will work out but I suspect it will be very similar to cable speeds...
I prefer wasd+mouse to console controllers...
Always have and always will... probably a side effect of the first games I played being on my rubber keyed ZX Spectrum...
That and I already have enough clutter around my TV without adding a console, and I would have to buy a shiny HD TV (and then pay to get my cable upgraded to HD, and have to find a HD replacement for my tivo, and...)
Yeah this is more or less how I work... graphics card was updated earlier in the year to a good £250ish card.
My current processor is a C2D, but a low end one as it was an emergency replacement with minimal funds after my PSU went smokey-sparky and fried the Pentium D that I had before.
True, but I do still play when I have time... I recently played through Portal and HL2 (inc episodes 1&2) for the umpteenth time (mainly to get some of the achievements they added to steam since the last time) and am looking forward to Portal 2.
The problem is more I still care enough (personal pride) about the system I use to be annoyed if its less than optimal (for the money I am willing to spend at the time).
There are already games out there that don't run well unless you are on a 64bit OS, have 4GB of ram and 4 cores.... and a good graphics card as well.
http://www.dilbert.com/2010-07-18/
Yeah but Intel need to label the chips with those 3 things for it to work rather than make up a random number and leave you scrambling around looking for useful info...
I can remember buying my first PC and having to decide between a Pentium 75 (i think) and a 486 DX 100 given my limited budget at the time... in the end I went with the P60 and if IIRC only because it also came with windows95, a mouse and speakers... although I mainly ran in DOS mode to play Tie Fighter...
... overdue for its 2 year processor and motherboard upgrade. It is overdue because when I started to look at what processor met my ideal performance/cost ratio it was impossible to figure out.
I don't have time spare to sit with a spreadsheet and a matrix of 30 different processors to work it out so I won't be upgrading now until something breaks. You lost a sale Intel, and I will have to pay more attention to system requirements of games for a while.
I would guess I am not the only one choosing not to buy because its so unclear...
All those small transactions followed by a refund make a mess of my credit card statement!
Actually I used to take full advantage of that until my credit card company started to phone me about multiple suspicious transactions on my account...
It is a (little) less hassle just to try the free version...
When there are two versions of app available, paid no-ad one and free ad-supported one, the paid one generally has higher ratings (sometimes the difference is really huge, like 5 stars for paid, 3 stars for free)
Or maybe the only people that forked out for the paid version are the people who used the free version and really liked it so bought it then rated the paid version 5. The people that only thought the app was average stuck with the free version and rated it as they saw fit.
Who in their right mind would try a free version of an app, rate it 1 (since it was buggy and crashed a lot) then buy the paid version?
My friend's house is in the country and sits in a natural dip. He can still listen to FM (all be it a little bit hissy at times) on any cheap set without any extra aerials, however he can't listen to DAB at all as he gets about 3 or so seconds of airplay followed by 10 or so seconds of total silence, and this is with a good quality receiver and a roof Ariel.
He also has similar issues with analogue/digital TV, unfortunately they will be turning off the analogue TV soon, so the only way he will be able to watch TV is with satellite dish and multiple set top boxes so there are no fights amongst his late teen children.
And also living quite a few miles from his local telephone exchange he can't get ADSL so no broadband internet so that isn't an option either....
All these things now have a negitive impact on his house value, where as 20 years ago when he bought the place none of these things were important and the isolation was a positive influence on the price.
Yey for the digital age!
It's not even that simple... some sites directly compete and have contradictory information....
The example they were using on the BBC News channel...
http://www.lovechips.co.uk/ - (chips = French fries to you odd Americans that can't call anything by its correct name... French fries are a specific type of chip and what you call chips are in fact crisps) run by the Potato Council which is a division of the Agriculture & Horticulture Development Board (a government entity) encourages you to eat MORE chips
http://www.nhs.uk/change4life/Pages/Default.aspx is run by the NHS and encourages you to eat LESS chips
(of course the fact that lovechips was featured on BBC means that their click count has gone way up and now are safe from the cuts... before it had fewer than 100 hits a month, and really should have been cut as it has nothing that is useful to voters or the government.
Blocking apps you don't like or don't work the way you think people should use their phones, and only allowing people to buy from one place, lets call it an 'app store'.
I'm sure iSeen this somewhere before...
Selecting all option threes...
Obviously it's [the Taliban] who keep [abducting scientists and anally probing them] in order to [protect their profits].
I can just about understand the profits part by why the hell are the Taliban preforming invasive procedures on geologists?
The factory reset is only intended to reset the phone to a known working state. It is not intended to wipe the phone of all user information. (Think windows 'upgrade in place' to fix corrupted system files)
The factory reset only resets the OS, basic phone settings and installed apps. It doesn't clear the contents of the installed microSD card (and people would complain if it did) and since the emmc memory is treated the same as the SD card and stores some of the things that were previously stored on the SD card it isn't wiped either. Imagine the complaints from people who had to do a factory reset due to a buggy app / corrupted settings and they lost all their photos, songs, bookmarks etc.
HTC only added the emmc memory in the new phone as a partial SD card replacement because people complained that when your remove/swap the SD card (for a change of mp3 files or more space to store photos for example) in the earlier phones installed apps couldn't access their settings and things like browser bookmarks were gone as well.
The only problem here is that HTC didn't make this clear and didn't provide a way to wipe the emmc (and SD card) memory for people wanting to sell or give away their phones when they get a new one...
Fonts (for example) are "digitally transformed into electronic codes", yet they are regularly converted back into pictures that can be displayed on screens or reproduced onto paper. Just because something is coded into something unrecognizable by humans doesn't mean that the process can't be reversed.
so where in that sentance did I say BP weren't liable?
What I was getting at is while they are dealing with the problem the CEO of BP doesn't deserve the witch-hunt that the US press and government are pushing. It was as much the regulators fault (for not properly regulating) as it was the drilling companies.
Also people need to remember that this is an accident. At no time did anyone set out to deliberately sink a rig, kill people or cause an environmental disaster.
Things are different in other parts of the world where US oil companies are contaminating large areas of rainforest with oil extraction techniques that make no attempt to limit pollution of the surrounding area. Google "rainforest oil pollution" if you don't believe me...
Well thats what you get for buying a Russian bride who (and her family) can't speak English...
Remember the failed drilling operation wasn't actually BP, it was a subcontractor.
Chances are it went something like this...
BP management: Please drill a well and do it soon
Contractor management: Sure it will cost x
BP management: Ok do it...
--- a bit later
Contractor driller1: This is going to take longer than management guessed
Contractor driller2: Ok we don't want to miss our completion bonus lets cut a few corners, just don't tell BP or management
--- a bit later still
Contractor driller1: Ohh craaaaap!
Chances are that the BP senior exec had no direct knowledge or influence on the actual drilling operation, beyond specifying the initial contract terms and requirements. Even despite this they haven't tried to avoid their responsibilities...
None of the comparisons are of exactly the same frame. 3 of the 6 images have different times in the corner.
I suspect the writer selected frames so H.264 won, but gave VP8 one win at the end to not seem biased.
Also his 'standard SD encoding test file that I've been using for years' would also be a source of suspicion. It is possible that his source file is already in a format that encodes better into H.264 than it does into VP8. And has already been mentioned here the resolution of the source is quite low for todays HD broadband world...
He used Sorenson Media to encode the files. In all probability they may be just better at setting some of the encoding parameters in the codec they have had longer...
And that was just a quick look. There are possibly other flaws that I haven't noticed yet.