Posts by Robert A. Rosenberg

Re: awesome

I see you remember Clint Eastwood in Firefox (or Joe90 in the Joe90 Pilot Episode) <g>.

Re: Microwave?

snowweb asked "Why the microwave backlink to the truck, when it's connected to the truck by a cable anyway and100M is short enough for a CAT6 cable?"

If you reread the story, you will note that the balloon is not tethered to the truck. The truck is somewhere up to 5Km away from where the balloon is located. Thus there is no wired connection between the truck and the balloon.

Electoral College is Flawed

Even the way the Electoral College (EC) is held is flawed. Each state gets 2 EC votes plus 1 vote for each Member of the House of Representatives it has (IOW: The same formula as is used to represent its Congressional Representation - 2 Senators and X House Seats). The problem is that instead of giving the 2 Statewide EC votes to whoever wins the Statewide Popular Vote (like is done for the Senate) and giving 1 EC vote to the winner of each House Election District (Like the House is elected), ALL of the state's ECs go to in a Winner Gets All manner based on the state-wide popular vote. Thus the results in the election districts are ignored and only the popular vote in the state counts. This means that it is possible to lose most of the Election Districts (close race) and still win all the ECs due to getting lots of votes in some of the EDs.

Re: Contempt

"I'd be interested to see what happens if Facebook is found to have acted in contempt of an Australian court."

That should be Contempt For a court that is attempting to issue an overbroard ban on the Facebook pages. If the request (ie: Censorship Order) were to block display (and prevent addition comments) by users with Australian IP Addresses then IMO there would be some plausible justification to impose this ban. I am not living in Australia and am not a potential juror so a total block on the messages (thus preventing me from seeing them or commenting) is going too far. Preventing potential jurors from seeing the messages is one thing, preventing anyone from seeing them is another.

Re: YouTube to be banned from search results?

"Sites with most copyright removal notices sink to bottom"

Which means that the more items you have, the more likely you are to get shoved to the bottom of the queue just because of the number of notices. If I have 10M items and get 10K notices (a 0.1% hit ratio) (which are immediately responded to upon receipt BTW) I am more likely to get penalized than a site with only 9K worth of notices and 100K items (a 9% hit ratio). This algorithm needs to be adjusted to take hit ratio into consideration. The more items you have to be disputed the more disputes you will have simply due to the number of targets even if the percentage of items in dispute is much lower.

Re: Shades of Mission Impossible?

I wonder why this was my FIRST though after seeing the video and the mention of the Blue Smoke <grin>. My ideas was the fabricators watched too many MI episodes in their youth.

MAC Address does not need to be exposed in IPN

While the low 64 bits (the Host Address) of an IPv6 IPN is by default the nodes MAC address, this not a requirement. The Host Address can be a random number that is generated by the computer so as to prevent it from being tracked (it is a form of NAT). Thus all that would be exposed is your Network Number (IPv6/48) just like now with a NAT'ed IPv4/32 WAN address.

I am a Doctor Who fan and until my Cable Company added BBCA (and the US broadcasts of the series were no longer embargoed for from 6 months to over a year by whoever had the US rights - SciFi and now BBCA) I watched the show in real time via Bit Torrent and then bought the DVDs once they finally got released. I also watched the companion Doctor Who Confidential (ie: The "Making Of" show about that week's episode) the same way (no longer since the BBC has canceled the show). While the DVDs have the Confidential episodes as extra material, they are trimmed down to 15 minutes from their BBC3 versions of 45 minutes. I think this applies not only to the US Region 1 DVDs but also the UK Region 2 DVDs. Thus the only way to see the show is to pirate it (although the iPlayer versions might be uncut). I wonder why they supply the trimmed as opposed to full length versions.

Certified Letters

Interestingly a certified letter that is refused (and thus returned to the sender) and presented unopened to the court has more legal standing than one that was actually delivered and signed for. In the refused case there is proof of what was attempted to be sent while in the latter case all there is proof of is that a certified letter was sent NOT its content. IOW: Sending blank paper has just as much standing as sending the actual letter so far as claiming what was sent. If/When the case goes to trial then the recipient can present what was in the envelope so blank paper is better than an innocuous letter since that latter can be proof of a fraudulent claim that the sender's copy was the same as what was in the envelope.

A certified letter (and Green Return Receipt Card) is proof to the sender that the letter was delivered and accepted. Since there is no proof of the content of the letter in the case of acceptance, there is just an assumption by the court of the contents not proof of its contents.

Birthday Paradox Sample Size

"the point made by "xlq" is also a hot topic in statistical circles. One aspect of it is the Birthday paradox: if you have a large enough population, coincidences will happen."."

The "Large Population" is 23 people by the way. Once you have 23 people the odds of two having the same birthday is over 50%.

Note that it is not a coincidence but a statistical requirement. A coincidence would involve matching birthdays with a designated person not matching everyone's birthday against that of everyone-else's. As you have more matches the probability goes up of having a match. Once you have a person 23 they have an over 50% chance of matching the birthday of one of persons 1-22 (none of whom share a birthday).

RFC1149 is the IP over Avian Carriers (AKA homing pigeon) Protocol

For details see: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RFC1149>.

US Areacodes

As noted US Phone numbers are NPA-EXC-NNNN. EXC is exchange which is of the from XYY where X=2-9 and Y is 0-9 (the first Y was originally 2-9 to avoid being confused with the NPA Area Codes. NPA (The area code) is of the form of XYZ where X=2-9, Y=0-8, and Z is 0-9. Y was originally 0 or 1 but was extended to allow 2-8. 9 is reserved for when they run out of area codes at which time XYZ will become X9YZ. Once a designated Permissive dialing period is over (during with you can dial the area code as 3 digits (XYZ) or 4 (X9YZ - the 9 acting as a flag that this is a 4 digit area code) additional 4 digit area codes will use 2-8 in the second position. BTW: The restriction on 9 prevented the issuance to New York City of area code 692 (ie: NYC).

NYC is one of the few areas where 10/11-Digit dialing is required due to the use of Overlay Area Codes (the assigning of the more than one area code to the same geographic area). The 1 can be omitted if you are dialing a number with the same area code as you have but can be used even in this case.

In most cases when an area code runs out of numbers there is an area code split where part of the area code gets to keep its old while the rest gets a new area code. Who gets to keep their old area code is based on who makes the best case for not being inconvenienced (or pays the most money under the table to the agency in charge of deciding who keeps the area code). The idea of just going the overlay route by mapping the new area code over the area covered by the old one is not allowed (except in NYC), as is the "inconvenience everyone" method of assigning 2 area codes and retiring the old one to be reissued later when the pool is almost all assigned.

Another Assumption

Since the number of replies to that article is so long I did not want to add my misconception to it (since I would have to read all of them to see if someone had already added it). Mine is base on an old Science Fiction novel I read years ago (and which I have somewhere in my collection since I recently purchased a used copy to add to my collection since I wanted to use it in an article as well as reread it). The name of the novel was "The Man Whose Name Would Not Fit". The plot was about a computer database being developed and implemented which had an assumption that a person's last name could not be longer than some limit (lets say 25 letters - forget the actual limit). The system allowed for hyphenated names (the author was British so took care of that case) but failed to accept a 26 character hyphenated last name. The story told of the outcome for this person and the problems that it caused.

Already done and Patented

Apple has a patent on a system where an Infra-Red signal will turn off the camera on iPhones to prevent them from recording anything that a movie theater or concert promoter does not want filmed. It can also be used by the Police to prevent recording of them beating up peaceful protesters or innocent motorists who are the "wrong" color.

The ad as worded was not misleading IMO

I know that the offer was supposed to be that if one person paid the standard price of £24.50, then their companion would get their meal for £9.80. The way the ad was worded was that two people would pay not the normal £49 for the two meals but £9.80 each (ie: £19.60) which is, as stated, a 60% savings (from £49). Thus on the face of it there was nothing incorrect with the wording of the offer since the real offer would only be a 30% saving. YES it was not the correct offer but the details as stated were 100% accurate (ie: The savings as stated matched the supposed price as stated).

Delay for a trial

Also, not only can it take 2 year for a trial to be held, you can be imprisoned while the government delays charging you or does not even bother to actually schedule the trial (even if there will be that 2 year wait to hold the trial). It is much easier to skip the trial and go direct to the enforcement of the sentence.

Cost of a NNTP SERVER

Steve Foster posted

"An NNTP server is pretty much fire and forget. It'll be mouldering in a broom closet somewhere, out of sight. Apart from a bit of juice and a few KB of bandwidth, what cost is there to rise?"

Steve -

I doubt that a "Few KB of Bandwidth" is enough to support a NNTP Server (I think the full feed is in the Tens or Hundreds of GB/day). In computing the cost, you are also ignoring the cost for storing the articles (unless you have a short retention period). The amount of data being archived keeps growing (for the same retention period). There is also the question of how full a selection of topics you want to keep.

Google Network Size

You are misreading what the statement means. It says that only 2 of the Tier 1 providers have a larger network. IOW: If you had a list of Tier 1 providers ordered by size and added Google to that list, it would appear in the list between the 2nd and 3rd largest network.

Batch Details Update

Check with your registrar again. Mine allows me to alter the details of all the domains in my account by just doing one update. I can also check a box next to the names of those I want to change in sync and it will update only those. I am surprised that your registrar's interface does not offer this time saving capability.

Sueing AT&T IS sueing MS

If you look at the situation with AT&T and MS, you will find that the agreement between the two has MS indemnifying AT&T for any suit growing out of AT&T's use of the MS product (this is a standard license clause - The user if sued will be reimbursed and/or defended by the supplier of the software). Thus MS is actually the one being sued with AT&T being used as a surrogate (who TIVO selected to try to avoid going after the actual claimed infringer - ie: MS).

Why no Leopard 32Bit Java6?

If I want/need Java6 support on Leopard (10.5) I am supplied with only 64Bit support. With Snow Leopard (10.6) the Java6 Supplied supports both 64bit and 32Bits. Why no 32Bit support with 10.5 (since they obviously have the code since 10.6 has it)?