224187
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224177
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foobarf00 writes:
As blogging get more popular, the occasions where I am trying to read an article and the website is down are increasing. I have encountered this multiple times where people say something like: "I got around 13,000 hits and server couldn't handle it". There are even websites that become popular by making the content of the popular article available. If you are running a blog and you have your own server, this article describes a few tips to easily handle at least half a million hits per day.
224151
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razorfizh writes:
"The weathermen in Beijing are moving ahead with plans to fire rockets to disperse rain clouds, an experiment aimed at securing more sunshine during the 2008 Olympics. Zheng Guoguang, head of China's Meteorological Administration, said practice drills were ready to begin, the state-run China Daily newspaper reported Tuesday. Zheng said the drills will simulate what will take place when the Olympics begin on Aug. 8, 2008. He said summer provided the last chance for meteorologists to practice under similar weather conditions. Chinese officials have said historical records show there's a 50 percent chance of rain for the opening ceremony — and the same probability of rain during the closing ceremony."
What the $%&^ are they thinking? What precidence does this set? No good can ever come from changing weather patterns ....
224145
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Coussie writes:
You've heard the expression lately, "where have all the bees gone?". Indicating that there is some environmental crisis on the horizon.
I've come to a similiar conclusion about the business I work in, Information Technology. Ten years ago, when I started in this business most of the people I worked with were very intelligent, and in many cases gifted. Most were well educated and had graduated from tier 1 or tier 2 universities and specialized in an IT discipline, such as computer science or engineering.
Today, I see very few people like that in IT. I've worked for mostly large fortune 500 companies in my career, and have worked for quite a few of them and have noticed this trend in recent years. In the company I work for now I am easily the only graduate of a tier 1 school on the entire floor. Most of the people I come in contact with have a military type background, are "legacy" employees that have been with the company since time began, or are people from other disciplines who simply "fell into" IT.
Where have all the smart people gone? What does this say about our industry, if anything?
224129
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iamchris writes:
First a little back story...
I love my TiVo. Even though Pay-per-view has been a staple of cable and satellite systems for years, and Video On Demand has been available over cable for several years now, it's only recently that one could rent videos and play them on your TiVo. Since the Series 2 devices came out, one of TiVo's goals was to make video content available for download. It is surprising that it has taken such a long time. A few months ago, Series 2 TiVo owners who had attached their appliance to the Internet were treated to $15.00 in free Amazon Unbox download credit to celebrate the launch of this long awaited feature. So, I queued up a move to download thinking that, like other internet movie download sites, I'd be watching my movie in 15 minutes and it would finish downloading before I finished watching the end of the movie. Skip forward in time 48 hours... Still not done downloading. I'm a glutton for punishment, and I wouldn't put it past my internet provider to traffic shape anything that resembles a competitive VOD service, so I keep trying. Same story. I have a 6MBit downlink, so it shouldn't take 48+ hours to download a 2 Gig video file, right?
Now the question: What are your experiences downloading videos from Unbox? Is speed a problem that Amazon is having, or are your downloads finishing in a resonable number of hours instead of days?
224115
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rhesuspieces00 writes:
The ubiquity of frustrating, unhelpful software interfaces has motivated decades of research into 'Human-Computer Interaction.' The author argues that the long-standing focus on 'interaction' is misguided. For a majority subset of software, called 'information software,' interactivity is actually a curse for users and a crutch for designers, and users' goals can be better satisfied through other means.
224109
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Anonymous EPA writes:
The BBC is reporting at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/6902543.stm that lice CCTV data that is used to enforce London's congestion charge is to be fed to the Metropolitan Police. This has required a partial suspension to the Data Protection Act. Do the authorities really think that the terrorists will use their own registration cars with registration numbers that can be traced? Yet another "it is national security so nothing else matters" police-state measure in the UK.
