Re:Transfer speed isn't the only reason for it.
on
Usenet Encoding: yEnc
·
· Score: 2
No, they're NOT counting the data compressed. At least, none of the servers I've subscribed to.
Well, it's a moot point anyway because pretty much everyone's already using it.
I can tell you that my upload and download times are way down for posting now that I'm using yEnc.
Re:concretely: this is why you don't need it
on
Usenet Encoding: yEnc
·
· Score: 3, Informative
See my other post in this thread. It's not all about dl speed or even drive space. Most serious usenet large binary downloaders use a premium news service, and they ALL have download/upload quotas and/or pay by the byte schemes. yEnc gets you 30% more for your buck on those servers.
Because people with premium news services (AKA, ANYONE that's serious about large binary downloads, the people at which yEnc is aimed): - have megabyte quotas, both upload and download - pay by the megabyte for their downloads
Also, this saves space on the server hard drive. NO WAY are usenet servers compressing data on their hard drives. It's one of the most challenging situations for a hard drive, they're not going to wreck their performance by using compression. Having less data means more retention on the server.
I personally have a Newsguy extra account, grandfathered at 1GB per day. I EXHAUST MY QUOTA by about 10AM, most days. I still do, but by then I've gotten 30% more data.
It's not all about transfer speed. yEnc means people with download quotas get 30% more stuff per day.
2KW is a good number as an average. I have a 5000 watt generator, and in real testing, I was able to power up EVERYTHING in my house at once, furnace, freezer, refrigerator, water pump, about half the lights, three computers, the TV and stereo. I intentionally boosted the thermostats on the fridges and ran the water to make sure they were actually running. This is above an "average" load.
Mind, I was careful to turn them on one at a time, but still, the generator kept the line at 125v / 60Hz and maintained it for 30 minutes.
Sure you have a 200 amp service, but you're not drawing that all the time. If you did, your electric bill would be what...
200A * 120v = 24kw * 24hr * 29 days = 16704 KW/hr @ $0.10 per KW/hr = $1670 per month.
A 2KW load is more reasonable @ $139 a month, and even that's kind of steep. My electric bill isn't that high even in the summer when I'm running A/C. Of course, I have mostly natural gas appliances, as much as is reasonably possible (IE I still have an electric refrigerator even though you can GET natural gas).
(note many people don't pay $0.10 a kw/hr, I actually pay about $0.08, but still, 2KW is a good number)
NOTE just because you have a 300W power supply doesn't mean your computer is drawing 300W. If you're talking just mainboards, I used to run netboot mainboards, and I ran 6 of them (pentium 166's) off of a SINGLE 145 watt power supply.
The 200 amp service is nice because then you can attach a spa, sauna, the table saw and welder out in the shop, electric stove, electric dryer, etc, and not pop the breaker if 3 of them happen to come on at once. However, that's WAY above average.
So what if they block 22. You can run SSH on any port you want. As long as they leave ONE port open, you're good.
Also, take a good look at your configuration on the windows box once a week or so, check the task list (use the freeware PS, not the windows task list, it hides stuff) and see if there's anything unusual running, particularly if the machine was rebooted when you weren't expecting it (these folks like to sneak in your cube at night and install stuff). Shut down services if you don't know what they are.
I used to be in the clone mfg business. One thing we determined is that companies go through cycles. For instance, WD has at various times been among the best AND the worst of the manufacturers out there. Seagate has made some wonderful drives and some absolute crap.
Here's a resource I've been watching lately. If anyone has similar things (published reports of reliability from places that deal with dead drives) please follow up to this message.
Actually, I like caddies. I'm kinda pissed that I couldn't buy a caddy drive when I built my new Athlon XP last week. The old caddy drive was 2X and I just couldn't live with the speed anymore, so I had to cave and get a tray drive. Ugh.
Try giving games to 3 year olds and see how long the CDs last. Then put them in caddies and see how long they last (hint: case 1, about 3 days, case 2, 6 years and counting).
"FREE" as in speech. If you want exclusion from liability, release the source code (as used internally in your company; no obfuscated code).
This makes sense, because by releasing the source code, you're opening up the code to be audited by independent people including the users or the user's agents. If you want to keep your code secret, then YOU are the only one who can speak to the security of the code, and therefore YOU are responsible for doing so.
Also, there are many free beer programs for the PC/MSDOS that I use that have been abandoned by their original authors, that I would like to improve, but they never made the source available. I think this would encourage people who are giving away free software to release the code as well, so their programs could have a life beyond that which they are personally willing to support. The only argument against it that I have thought of is if the person is really not legit, that is, the program includes code that they don't really have the right to distribute (borrowed from work, etc).
Speaking for myself, I'm all for this. How many times have you wanted to do a better job but were given impossible deadlines, leading to shipping something you knew wasn't tested well enough, and hoping to fix the bugs later? Most programmers WANT to produce good software, but are not given time or tools.
I hope that something like this will cause managers and execs to provide proper tools and sufficient time to produce truly stable programs. I do believe that, like other forms of liability, though, unless intentional negligence is shown, liability must stop at corporations, not individual programmers.
Also, there must be still a way for free software to escape liability. If you're getting something for free, you can't expect the author to take liability.
I would think that in this situation, Microsoft should WELCOME liability law; it would be a great selling point for them in the face of Linux, if they could say "if you use free software, nobody is liable if it destroys your business, but Microsoft IS liable for any harm caused your business by our software." I imagine that many corp execs would give that argument a lot of weight.
However, at the same time I don't know if it would be 100% effective, because by now enough CTO's have realized that Linux (and other free solutions) is a more reliable platform for many applications, and it's still better for all involved to use something that works than to use something that causes you monetary loss and then try to recoup it in court.
I'd rather see an increase in postal rates. This is really bothering me. What's bothering me more is that it's not bothering most people here. I'd like to get more info first. Did MS pay USPS to place those? If not, then anyone should be able to place any ads they want in any post office. If so, then how much? Again, anyone should be able to buy space.
Everyone that I know that *really tried* to learn RPN wound up being MUCH faster and more accurate in the end. I absolutely HATE algebraic calculators now. I don't see how anyone gets any useful work done on them. Sure, they're fine for adding up a grocery bill.
When I was in school, mid 1980's, you could tell the TI owners because they were buying a new calculator about once a year. They broke that fast. The buttons started bouncing after just a month or so of heavy engineering-student use. Most TI owners gave up and bought an HP within a year or two.
Of course, it helps being on a college where you could hand an HP to almost anyone and they knew how to use it.
Because the longer we've watched any specific rock, the better we'll know its orbit. Also some rocks may not come around that often. Say we get a rock that only comes near every 20 years, it's on a highly elliptical orbit. That means not only do we only see it every 20 years, but it could be coming at us damn fast, which means it's harder to move.
We need to start looking NOW so that we'll have accurate maps when we ARE able to do something about it.
Sounds like you had an incompable camera. Just because the microdrive will physically go in to the camera doesn't mean it'll work right.
I used a 1GB microdrive in my Pro90 for about 8 or 9 months, shooting thousands of photos, and never a problem or lost picture.
I'd also wonder what camera you had that could only take a couple dozen photos on a set of 1800 mAH batteries. The Pro90 has a LiIon battery, 1500 mAH at 7.2 volts, and with the microdrive in place, I tested it at 158 shots per charge in NORMAL use (walking around the zoo, taking photos of animals, extensive use of zoom, etc, not sitting in a lab pushing the shutter button time and again).
Again, I bet your camera wasn't designed for the Microdrive. You have to implement support for the power saving features of the Microdrive in firmware, otherwise it'll just spin constantly and just suck down your batteries.
Don't blame the Microdrive if you put it in a non-compatible device then had trouble.
Also, the 512M and 1GB drives draw a lot less power than the 1st generation 340s.
BTW the Delkin MD is an IBM Microdrive with a sticker slapped on it.
However, I don't really think the MD is a good option now. I dumped the Microdrive because CF memory prices started dropping like a rock, and I'd rather have CF due the much higher shock resistance. I didn't have any trouble with the Microdrive, but I was always just one slip away from dropping it on the concrete and turning it into nothing but a conversation piece.
I was thinking about this the other day after talking to someone who doesn't like digital.
My analogy:
Artists aren't still limited to using crushed berries and charcoal on rocks as their medium. A *good* artist uses whatever tools allows him to best express the art.
I don't rip CDs to steal music. I rip CDs because most of the ways that I listen to music anymore are MP3. I put 10 or 15 albums on one CD, then drop it into my DVD player (Apex) to listen at home, into my computer to listen at work, and into my portable MP3 player to listen while walking or in the car. The convenience of many albums on one CD is great.
The copy protection won't stop me anyway; I have a line input on my computer. It will just make it a pain in the ass for me, someone who DOES give them money, to use albums the way I want to.
Depends on where he is. I lived for 10 years in Michigan's UP, which is south of most of Canada (though perhaps not south of most of the population of Canada), and though there were some days that were a bit uncomfortable, I certainly never felt the need to have A/C installed. I remember a few days at about 37 degrees, but in general it stayed around 30 or less, and that's not air conditioner weather in that area as the humidity was very low in general. If you have no trees, your house is probably baking and you may need the A/C then.
We used to do that in the 80's at Michigan Tech also, but we didn't need the sign.
Actually, I remember doing it when I was up there for summer youth program as a high schooler in the 70's too. And I bet they were doing it in the 40's as well:-)
He's referring to a similar project a couple of years ago where you could play tetris on a building using a controller attached to the lights in the building.
I think these kids think they're hot stuff programmers. In reality, they're using kits, and they're programmers the same way that someone who changes their own oil is an automotive engineer.
Really, I think some of them don't intend it to go this wide, it just gets out of control. But some are probably doing it to get in the world-wide press. Some may even be trying to prove a point.
Caveat: I haven't done ANY research on this, but...
I wouldn't think sound card inputs would be of any real use, except to check out the waveform. They're not going to be calibrated for voltage, and if you did calibrate them, I can't believe they'd be very stable.
But the big problem is that those inputs are going to be intended for AC input. They are BY DESIGN intended to ignore any DC component of the input; they do so typically by a capacitor isolating the input. This is exactly what you DON'T want.
If you're really interested in this kind of stuff, just pick up a copy of Nuts & Volts magazine at better newsstands; in the back you'll find hundreds of classified ads for lots of hungry garage inventors and small manufacturers producing, among other very interesting toys, input cards to do exactly this sort of thing.
would you buy a car with passive antitheft (chip in the key) then install a spare key so that the antitheft is effectively disabled?
I think passive antitheft is great. I no longer worry too much about people stealing my car. I know that it's still possible, but not by the average street thug. Pros will get my car anyway, by putting it on a trailer if they have to.
I never understood remote starters anyway. I lived in Michigan's UP for 10 years, and it was often well below zero, but I wasn't THAT much of a wuss that I couldn't go start my own damn car. I guess if you're 80 years old and frail, it'd be nice to have the car warmed up for you, but let's get real! Why don't you get a down filled seat while you're at it?
The moon has about a 14 earth-day-long day and a 14 earth-day-long night.
If you put the observatory in a crater, that would extend the night. There's no atmosphere, so as long as the sun isn't shining directly on the optics, you're OK. However, there's still infrared interference; you'd want to have a double (or more) wall anyway. If you used a typical slitted dome, you could do observations away from the sun even in the daylight.
So really, the thing could be used to some extent every day of the year.
Crud, I bought a copy of Bleem. I haven't used it for a year or more, but I'd like to get a copy of the final version they shipped. It'd be nice if that was at least available. Anyone got any mirrors of it?
This was incredibly bad. Think a half dozen people in the desert with one camera and a script written in one night with the assistance of some booze or something. Then when they got back from their filming, they found that the sound hadn't worked, so they had to loop it and they (obviously) did a poor job.
I can't wait for this one! It's been a while since it aired.
Not at 30 frames per second. They get lots of time on a tape by recording only a few (or maybe only 1) frame per second. The problem specified 30 frames per second.
Slashdot Mirror
No, they're NOT counting the data compressed. At least, none of the servers I've subscribed to.
Well, it's a moot point anyway because pretty much everyone's already using it.
I can tell you that my upload and download times are way down for posting now that I'm using yEnc.
See my other post in this thread. It's not all about dl speed or even drive space. Most serious usenet large binary downloaders use a premium news service, and they ALL have download/upload quotas and/or pay by the byte schemes. yEnc gets you 30% more for your buck on those servers.
Because people with premium news services (AKA, ANYONE that's serious about large binary downloads, the people at which yEnc is aimed):
- have megabyte quotas, both upload and download
- pay by the megabyte for their downloads
Also, this saves space on the server hard drive. NO WAY are usenet servers compressing data on their hard drives. It's one of the most challenging situations for a hard drive, they're not going to wreck their performance by using compression. Having less data means more retention on the server.
I personally have a Newsguy extra account, grandfathered at 1GB per day. I EXHAUST MY QUOTA by about 10AM, most days. I still do, but by then I've gotten 30% more data.
It's not all about transfer speed. yEnc means people with download quotas get 30% more stuff per day.
2KW is a good number as an average. I have a 5000 watt generator, and in real testing, I was able to power up EVERYTHING in my house at once, furnace, freezer, refrigerator, water pump, about half the lights, three computers, the TV and stereo. I intentionally boosted the thermostats on the fridges and ran the water to make sure they were actually running. This is above an "average" load.
Mind, I was careful to turn them on one at a time, but still, the generator kept the line at 125v / 60Hz and maintained it for 30 minutes.
Sure you have a 200 amp service, but you're not drawing that all the time. If you did, your electric bill would be what...
200A * 120v = 24kw * 24hr * 29 days = 16704 KW/hr @ $0.10 per KW/hr = $1670 per month.
A 2KW load is more reasonable @ $139 a month, and even that's kind of steep. My electric bill isn't that high even in the summer when I'm running A/C. Of course, I have mostly natural gas appliances, as much as is reasonably possible (IE I still have an electric refrigerator even though you can GET natural gas).
(note many people don't pay $0.10 a kw/hr, I actually pay about $0.08, but still, 2KW is a good number)
NOTE just because you have a 300W power supply doesn't mean your computer is drawing 300W. If you're talking just mainboards, I used to run netboot mainboards, and I ran 6 of them (pentium 166's) off of a SINGLE 145 watt power supply.
The 200 amp service is nice because then you can attach a spa, sauna, the table saw and welder out in the shop, electric stove, electric dryer, etc, and not pop the breaker if 3 of them happen to come on at once. However, that's WAY above average.
So what if they block 22. You can run SSH on any port you want. As long as they leave ONE port open, you're good.
Also, take a good look at your configuration on the windows box once a week or so, check the task list (use the freeware PS, not the windows task list, it hides stuff) and see if there's anything unusual running, particularly if the machine was rebooted when you weren't expecting it (these folks like to sneak in your cube at night and install stuff). Shut down services if you don't know what they are.
I used to be in the clone mfg business. One thing we determined is that companies go through cycles. For instance, WD has at various times been among the best AND the worst of the manufacturers out there. Seagate has made some wonderful drives and some absolute crap.
Here's a resource I've been watching lately. If anyone has similar things (published reports of reliability from places that deal with dead drives) please follow up to this message.
http://www.driveservice.com/bestwrst.htm
Actually, I like caddies. I'm kinda pissed that I couldn't buy a caddy drive when I built my new Athlon XP last week. The old caddy drive was 2X and I just couldn't live with the speed anymore, so I had to cave and get a tray drive. Ugh.
Try giving games to 3 year olds and see how long the CDs last. Then put them in caddies and see how long they last (hint: case 1, about 3 days, case 2, 6 years and counting).
"FREE" as in speech. If you want exclusion from liability, release the source code (as used internally in your company; no obfuscated code).
This makes sense, because by releasing the source code, you're opening up the code to be audited by independent people including the users or the user's agents. If you want to keep your code secret, then YOU are the only one who can speak to the security of the code, and therefore YOU are responsible for doing so.
Also, there are many free beer programs for the PC/MSDOS that I use that have been abandoned by their original authors, that I would like to improve, but they never made the source available. I think this would encourage people who are giving away free software to release the code as well, so their programs could have a life beyond that which they are personally willing to support. The only argument against it that I have thought of is if the person is really not legit, that is, the program includes code that they don't really have the right to distribute (borrowed from work, etc).
Speaking for myself, I'm all for this. How many times have you wanted to do a better job but were given impossible deadlines, leading to shipping something you knew wasn't tested well enough, and hoping to fix the bugs later? Most programmers WANT to produce good software, but are not given time or tools.
I hope that something like this will cause managers and execs to provide proper tools and sufficient time to produce truly stable programs. I do believe that, like other forms of liability, though, unless intentional negligence is shown, liability must stop at corporations, not individual programmers.
Also, there must be still a way for free software to escape liability. If you're getting something for free, you can't expect the author to take liability.
I would think that in this situation, Microsoft should WELCOME liability law; it would be a great selling point for them in the face of Linux, if they could say "if you use free software, nobody is liable if it destroys your business, but Microsoft IS liable for any harm caused your business by our software." I imagine that many corp execs would give that argument a lot of weight.
However, at the same time I don't know if it would be 100% effective, because by now enough CTO's have realized that Linux (and other free solutions) is a more reliable platform for many applications, and it's still better for all involved to use something that works than to use something that causes you monetary loss and then try to recoup it in court.
I'd rather see an increase in postal rates. This is really bothering me. What's bothering me more is that it's not bothering most people here. I'd like to get more info first. Did MS pay USPS to place those? If not, then anyone should be able to place any ads they want in any post office. If so, then how much? Again, anyone should be able to buy space.
Everyone that I know that *really tried* to learn RPN wound up being MUCH faster and more accurate in the end. I absolutely HATE algebraic calculators now. I don't see how anyone gets any useful work done on them. Sure, they're fine for adding up a grocery bill.
When I was in school, mid 1980's, you could tell the TI owners because they were buying a new calculator about once a year. They broke that fast. The buttons started bouncing after just a month or so of heavy engineering-student use. Most TI owners gave up and bought an HP within a year or two.
Of course, it helps being on a college where you could hand an HP to almost anyone and they knew how to use it.
Because the longer we've watched any specific rock, the better we'll know its orbit. Also some rocks may not come around that often. Say we get a rock that only comes near every 20 years, it's on a highly elliptical orbit. That means not only do we only see it every 20 years, but it could be coming at us damn fast, which means it's harder to move.
We need to start looking NOW so that we'll have accurate maps when we ARE able to do something about it.
Sounds like you had an incompable camera. Just because the microdrive will physically go in to the camera doesn't mean it'll work right.
I used a 1GB microdrive in my Pro90 for about 8 or 9 months, shooting thousands of photos, and never a problem or lost picture.
I'd also wonder what camera you had that could only take a couple dozen photos on a set of 1800 mAH batteries. The Pro90 has a LiIon battery, 1500 mAH at 7.2 volts, and with the microdrive in place, I tested it at 158 shots per charge in NORMAL use (walking around the zoo, taking photos of animals, extensive use of zoom, etc, not sitting in a lab pushing the shutter button time and again).
Again, I bet your camera wasn't designed for the Microdrive. You have to implement support for the power saving features of the Microdrive in firmware, otherwise it'll just spin constantly and just suck down your batteries.
Don't blame the Microdrive if you put it in a non-compatible device then had trouble.
Also, the 512M and 1GB drives draw a lot less power than the 1st generation 340s.
BTW the Delkin MD is an IBM Microdrive with a sticker slapped on it.
However, I don't really think the MD is a good option now. I dumped the Microdrive because CF memory prices started dropping like a rock, and I'd rather have CF due the much higher shock resistance. I didn't have any trouble with the Microdrive, but I was always just one slip away from dropping it on the concrete and turning it into nothing but a conversation piece.
I was thinking about this the other day after talking to someone who doesn't like digital.
My analogy:
Artists aren't still limited to using crushed berries and charcoal on rocks as their medium. A *good* artist uses whatever tools allows him to best express the art.
I don't rip CDs to steal music. I rip CDs because most of the ways that I listen to music anymore are MP3. I put 10 or 15 albums on one CD, then drop it into my DVD player (Apex) to listen at home, into my computer to listen at work, and into my portable MP3 player to listen while walking or in the car. The convenience of many albums on one CD is great.
The copy protection won't stop me anyway; I have a line input on my computer. It will just make it a pain in the ass for me, someone who DOES give them money, to use albums the way I want to.
Depends on where he is. I lived for 10 years in Michigan's UP, which is south of most of Canada (though perhaps not south of most of the population of Canada), and though there were some days that were a bit uncomfortable, I certainly never felt the need to have A/C installed. I remember a few days at about 37 degrees, but in general it stayed around 30 or less, and that's not air conditioner weather in that area as the humidity was very low in general. If you have no trees, your house is probably baking and you may need the A/C then.
We used to do that in the 80's at Michigan Tech also, but we didn't need the sign.
:-)
Actually, I remember doing it when I was up there for summer youth program as a high schooler in the 70's too. And I bet they were doing it in the 40's as well
He's referring to a similar project a couple of years ago where you could play tetris on a building using a controller attached to the lights in the building.
I think these kids think they're hot stuff programmers. In reality, they're using kits, and they're programmers the same way that someone who changes their own oil is an automotive engineer.
Really, I think some of them don't intend it to go this wide, it just gets out of control. But some are probably doing it to get in the world-wide press. Some may even be trying to prove a point.
Caveat: I haven't done ANY research on this, but...
I wouldn't think sound card inputs would be of any real use, except to check out the waveform. They're not going to be calibrated for voltage, and if you did calibrate them, I can't believe they'd be very stable.
But the big problem is that those inputs are going to be intended for AC input. They are BY DESIGN intended to ignore any DC component of the input; they do so typically by a capacitor isolating the input. This is exactly what you DON'T want.
If you're really interested in this kind of stuff, just pick up a copy of Nuts & Volts magazine at better newsstands; in the back you'll find hundreds of classified ads for lots of hungry garage inventors and small manufacturers producing, among other very interesting toys, input cards to do exactly this sort of thing.
would you buy a car with passive antitheft (chip in the key) then install a spare key so that the antitheft is effectively disabled?
I think passive antitheft is great. I no longer worry too much about people stealing my car. I know that it's still possible, but not by the average street thug. Pros will get my car anyway, by putting it on a trailer if they have to.
I never understood remote starters anyway. I lived in Michigan's UP for 10 years, and it was often well below zero, but I wasn't THAT much of a wuss that I couldn't go start my own damn car. I guess if you're 80 years old and frail, it'd be nice to have the car warmed up for you, but let's get real! Why don't you get a down filled seat while you're at it?
The moon has about a 14 earth-day-long day and a 14 earth-day-long night.
If you put the observatory in a crater, that would extend the night. There's no atmosphere, so as long as the sun isn't shining directly on the optics, you're OK. However, there's still infrared interference; you'd want to have a double (or more) wall anyway. If you used a typical slitted dome, you could do observations away from the sun even in the daylight.
So really, the thing could be used to some extent every day of the year.
Crud, I bought a copy of Bleem. I haven't used it for a year or more, but I'd like to get a copy of the final version they shipped. It'd be nice if that was at least available. Anyone got any mirrors of it?
This was incredibly bad. Think a half dozen people in the desert with one camera and a script written in one night with the assistance of some booze or something. Then when they got back from their filming, they found that the sound hadn't worked, so they had to loop it and they (obviously) did a poor job.
I can't wait for this one! It's been a while since it aired.
Not at 30 frames per second. They get lots of time on a tape by recording only a few (or maybe only 1) frame per second. The problem specified 30 frames per second.