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User: tonigonenstein

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Comments · 105

  1. Re:BitTorrent Inc. concept flawed from the start on BitTorrent Inc. Introduces Ad-Supported Downloads · · Score: -1, Troll

    However, if you have a half-decent revenue model, such as advertising, revenue easily offsets the bandwidth costs of distributing video from a central server over HTTP, so why put your users through the pain of having to install a piece of client software?

    BitTorrent's problem is that anyone that can afford to pay them for their services can probably afford to distribute their content over HTTP from a centralized server, and why wouldn't they given the much lower barrier to entry for their users?

    lines 5-7: warning: redundant paragraph.
    lines 1-3: point previously made here.
  2. Re:BitTorrent Inc. concept flawed from the start on BitTorrent Inc. Introduces Ad-Supported Downloads · · Score: -1, Troll

    However, if you have a half-decent revenue model, such as advertising, revenue easily offsets the bandwidth costs of distributing video from a central server over HTTP, so why put your users through the pain of having to install a piece of client software? BitTorrent's problem is that anyone that can afford to pay them for their services can probably afford to distribute their content over HTTP from a centralized server, and why wouldn't they given the much lower barrier to entry for their users?

    lines 5-7: warning: redundant paragraph.
    lines 1-3: point previously made here.
  3. Re:which farm animal represents 48% of america? on 48% of Americans Reject Evolution · · Score: 1

    Until then, I'm down with science. It works.
    You're not alone: http://xkcd.com/c54.html
  4. Re:Online with my CPU? on Web-Based Photo Editor Roundup · · Score: 1

    You have to make a distinction between an application that runs on a server and whose interface is presented on the PC (html,ajax), and an application (flash,java) that is *distributed* over the web but which runs on the PC.
    Snipshot is of the first kind. And I agree with you that this kind of application cannot offer more than the basics nor scale, unless you are ready to throw ridiculous amount of money at it for the server infrastructure.
    Fauxto, for instance, is of the second kind. In this case all the image processing is done on your CPU. The only difference with a standard application is that you don't have to install it and that it has a beautiful browser chrome around. I would say this kind of applications makes sense, but of course a solution à la webstart that get rid of the unnecessary browser would be even better.

  5. Re:Why? on Is KDE 4.0 the Holy Grail of Desktops? · · Score: 1

    I think it does what you want
    How should I parse that ?

    It does X
    I think you want X
    or

    You want X
    I think it does X
  6. timesheetphp on Software for Managing Timesheets? · · Score: 3, Informative

    I am surprised almost no one mentioned free software solutions. We use timesheetphp at work and its pretty good. We naturally had to make a couple modifications but not that much. Check the demo on the web site.

  7. Re:Already has several others on Bill Gates to Finally Receive His Harvard Degree · · Score: 1

    But, how /many/ people do you know that have "invented" or wrote original software?

    Here is a (very) small list of software innovations in different domains:
    • Thompson and Ritchie, UNIX
    • Knuth, TeX
    • Alain Colmerauer, Prolog
    • Alexey Pajitnov, Tetris
  8. GPS != navigation on Patent Filed for Underwater GPS · · Score: 1
    This system has absolutely nothing to do with the GPS, since neither the submersibles nor the base stations use it. The base stations seem to work like a VOR-DME, a decades old technology. But I guess adding "underwater" makes it patentable.

    And by the way, from the summary:

    GPS doesn't work underwater, as the signal cannot reach the satellite from a submersible
    In the GPS the signal doesn't go from the receiver to the satellite but the other way around.
  9. Re:Two megs? on LinuxBIOS Gets GUI · · Score: 1

    I like how they are proud of having X and rxvt. What they may not realize is that you don't need X if you are just going to run a terminal emulator. Replacing rxvt by a useful graphical application (still staying under 2MiB) would make for a more convincing demo.

  10. Re:Has anyone tried on NASA Fires Astronaut · · Score: 1

    the mission would get more publicity from rude jokes by Leno and Letterman than any of the actual science would
    What is this "science" thing that you say is performed on the shuttle ?
  11. Re:I've got another idea on A Free XML-Based Operating System · · Score: 1

    Pity that you need another OS to run emacs
    Actually you don't need an OS to run emacs anymore. LICE, running on top of Movitz gives you emacs on the metal.
  12. Late to the game on The Wii's MEMS Inventor on Future Technology · · Score: 1

    We want to do this in less than a 30-millimeter [on a side] cube, to serve as an image stabilizer in cameras and to track a person's position in the intervals when he can't get a GPS signal.
    Maybe he should take a look at the 6mm x 10mm x 2.5mm NEC gyro (http://www.nec-tokin.com/english/product/piezodev ice2/ceramicgyro.html) or at the 7mm x 4.8mm x 3.2mm Analog Devices one (http://www.analog.com/UploadedFiles/Data_Sheets/A DXRS150.pdf). With both of these a 3 axis gyro fits in less than 10cm^3.
  13. Re:This is what is meant by the expression... on Cartoon Network CEO Resigns Over Aqua Teen Scare · · Score: 1

    Wrong. The terrorists have not won, the government has.
    You seem to forget that the goal of terrorists (whoever they are), is not to terrorize the population for the sake of terrorizing the population, but in order to attain a certain political objective, like forcing the government to make concessions (e.g. retiring troops), forcing a military reaction in order to unite the population against a common enemy to increase one's power (e.g. The Hamas provoking a military action from Israel in Lebanon. Notice that they consider that a "victory", even though many lebanese died as a result), or something else.
    When the population freaks out for every little incident, no "terrorist" sees any benefit, but the government, which can play on fear, erode liberties, increase police spending, and avoid discussion of the real issues (unemployment, education, health, ...), certainly does.
    Now of course if you consider the government to be the terrorists, you would be right.

  14. right on NASA May Have to Buy Trips to Space · · Score: 1

    There is no excuse for NASA to build custom rockets when there are suitable commercial offerings. They already use Delta rockets for space probes, they could use Atlas rockets for crew transport / larger payloads.

    This money could be better spend on science (insert list of canceled space probes) and development of new technology (solar sails, nuclear pulse propulsion, etc...). It is sad to see how this area always see their budgets cut for the benefit of the shuttle welfare program.

  15. Re:TPM is anti-virtualization on AACS Hack Blamed on Bad Player Implementation · · Score: 1

    Sure, but the whole point is that you can't access the keys the "trusted" mainboard manufacturers encode into the hardware.
    I am not familiar with the TPM spec, but wouldn't it be possible for the virtual TPM to relay requests to the real TPM ? Then you could access the software player's state by querying the VM.
  16. Re:Not retrieval on India Brings Back Orbiting Satellite to Earth · · Score: 1

    The title is correct but misleading. A better one would have been "India successfully tests reentry capsule".

  17. nomenclature on Flash Memory HDD for Notebooks Launched · · Score: 5, Informative

    Can you stop calling them "flash hard drives"? They are precisely not hard drives, but flash drives. It is like saying "liquid crystal cathode ray tube" or "electric internal combustion engine".

  18. Re:Separate your environments on A Proper Environment for Web Development? · · Score: 1
    The parent is spot on, although maintaining completely separate hardware systems is probably too expensive for simple projects. First, I can give you two very important advices:
    • do not allow developers to make modifications directly to the live server. Nothing should be able to avoid going through testing.
    • do not manipulate the files on the server directly. At work I use the following system: each site is kept in subversion and a custom script (with a simple web frontend) synchronise the web server with a particular revision of the repository. This provides three benefits:
      • integrity. What is put on the server is exactly what was tested.
      • logging. You know which revision was live at any given time. Helpful for problem reports.
      • rollback. If you have a problem with the last version, you can instantly roll back to a previous working revision while you investigate the problem.
    To provide separate environments, giving each developer a XAMPP installation (I prefer a linux VM) is sufficient. When they are done they can commit their changes.
    Testing can checkout the code and test it in a similar environment. When it is done, the approved revision is pushed on the server using a technique similar to the one mentionned above.
    In this setup the dev and test systems are not 100% identical to the web server but this doesn't usually matter. If you have the same versions of php/mysql it is enough.
  19. Re:Honeymoon is Over? on Google Deprecates SOAP API · · Score: 3, Informative
    I the only one that cringes at using SOAP messages (or XML in general) for something that's supposed to be a machine-to-machine interaction? If you're going to write a new standard, why not write something more efficient?
    No you're not. The sad thing is that before the invention of XML there already was a great standard for this: ASN.1, which is widely used in the telecommunication industry. ASN.1 allows one to represent hierarchical information, just like XML, but its advantage is that it defines several encodings: several binary encodings with different tradeoffs for efficient machine processing, and a text encoding for humans. You choose the best encoding for your application (which you can always change if you want), and you have standard tools to convert between encodings if necessary.
    In this exemple, you could use a binary encoding for the wire protocol and a text encoding for the service description (which is normally written by a human). If you wanted to debug the wire communication you could intercept the binary encoding and convert it to the text encoding to present it to a human. Best of both worlds: efficient machine processing and possibility of human inspection if necessary.
    Proposals for a binary xml are just attempts to recreate the ASN.1 functionnality of alternate encodings after the fact. Talk about wheel reinvention.
  20. Re:Honeymoon is Over? on Google Deprecates SOAP API · · Score: 2, Insightful
    I hope you do realize that you are not supposed to manipulated the wire protocol directly, be it xml, IIOP or something else. In the case of SOAP there are libraries that let you programmaticaly create a message. But if you have a WSDL that describes the service (similar in intent to CORBA's IDL), and most service provider give you that, you can use libraries that create a proxy object from the WSDL. Then you can call native methods directly on the proxy.
    In your exemple that would be something like

    proxy = make_wsdl_proxy ("http://provider.com/service.wsdl");
    cc = proxy.getCountryCodeFromAbbr("UK");
    And that's it, it cannot be easier than that. Search on the web there are several such libraries available for different languages. If you use a compiled language like C++ you can also compile the WSDL in advance to a proxy.cc/proxy.h client wrapper, much as with an IDL compiler. But in a language like javascript it is better to create the proxy dynamically, and you can also use introspection to discover which methods are available for exemple.
  21. Re:Honeymoon is Over? on Google Deprecates SOAP API · · Score: 1
    I cannot name a single well-designed W3C spec that was consortium-driven, and cannot name a single consortium-driven W3C spec that was well-designed

    To play the logic nazi, I'd like to point out that the second statement is logically identical to the first. They both say that the intersection of well-designed specs and consortium-driven specs is empty. This is a common mistake.
  22. battery life on Malaysia to Use RFID Number Plates Next Year · · Score: 1
    They will have a battery life of 10 years, it said
    I thought the whole idea of RFID is that the chip is powered by the reader so that the issue of battery life disappears.
  23. Re:Programmer senses tingling on Seeing the Earth Almost Live · · Score: 1

    Because PNGs are useless on photographic images and demand more CPU / memory to process.

  24. simple ideas... on Silly String Goes to War Against IEDs · · Score: -1, Flamebait
    "In an age of multimillion-dollar high-tech weapons systems, sometimes it's the simplest ideas that can save lives"
    Refraining from invading an independent country is a very simple idea. It costs nothing and saves lifes. Iraki lives as well but that of course does not matter.
    Her son is a professional killer. She should be ashamed. If he dies in Irak, he deserves it.
  25. Re:automatisation is not intelligence on Intelligent Satellite Notices Volcanic Activity · · Score: 1
    This thing DID decide by itself that the volcano was interesting and decided to observe it, without being told
    I wasn't told to observe that particular volcano but it was told that sudden changes were interesting. It did not figure that out by itself.