On Thu, 02 Feb 2012 10:24:48 +0000, Invisible wrote:

>> But if you're unaware of what Citrix even *does*, then that calls into
>> question (in an interview) whether you even know what's going on in IT.
> 
> I can see that knowing about how (say) Google manages their data centres
> might be quite useful if you're applying to Google. If you're applying
> to somebody who isn't Google, I'm not sure how that's useful.
> 
> ...unless it *isn't* useful at all, it's just another one of those
> worthless things that "create the right impression".

Being aware of technology is important.

You find yourself in a job that you'd like to get out of, but you have no 
idea how to do it.

People give you ideas, and you assert "that can't possibly work" or "that 
can't possibly be useful".

But people who do those things actually find other jobs.

You don't do those things, and you don't have luck finding another job.

What does this tell you?

>>> As usual with Wikipedia, the page babbles about updates and feeds and
>>> XML and "syndication" and something about RDF, but utterly fails to
>>> explain WHAT IT IS.
>>
>> <sigh>
>>
>>  From wikipedia:
>>
>> --- snip ---
>>
>> RSS feeds benefit publishers by letting them syndicate content
>> automatically.
> 
> WTF does "syndicate" mean?

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/syndicate

Definition 8.


>> A standardized XML file format allows the information to be published
>> once and viewed by many different programs.
> 
> Because XHTML isn't an XML format already. Oh, wait... actually yes it
> is. And many different programs can view it. So...?

Again, go look a the tour of Google Reader.

>> They benefit readers who want to subscribe to timely updates from
>> favorite websites or to aggregate feeds from many sites into one place.
> 
> This at least hints at what RSS is actually about. But it still seems
> quite vague. I'm still not clear exactly what it's getting at.

Look at the tour.

>> RSS feeds can be read using software called an "RSS reader", "feed
>> reader", or "aggregator", which can be web-based, desktop-based, or
>> mobile-device-based.
> 
> So... you need software that supports RSS in order to use RSS? OK, fair
> enough.

Yes, now you're understanding it.  Software or - surprise - another 
website.

>> The user subscribes to a feed by entering into the reader the feed's
>> URI or by clicking a feed icon in a web browser that initiates the
>> subscription process.
> 
> We still haven't established exactly what point "subscribing" serves,
> but OK...

Yes, actually, we have.  Subscribing means that instead of going to 
Orphi's blog to see what he's written recently, I can go to my reader and 
see what he's written recently.  Along with a bunch of other sources all 
at once.

>> The RSS reader checks the user's subscribed feeds regularly for new
>> work, downloads any updates that it finds, and provides a user
>> interface to monitor and read the feeds.
> 
> This is all very abstract. It checks "regularly" for "new work",
> downloads any "updates", and provides a UI to "monitor" such updates. So
> what does that *mean*, in real world terms?

It means I can see that you've written something new in your blog without 
going and visiting your blog.

And about 100 other sites that I keep an eye on without visiting them 
each every day to see what's new.

>> RSS allows users to avoid manually inspecting all of the websites they
>> are interested in, and instead subscribe to websites such that all new
>> content is pushed onto their browsers when it becomes available.
> 
> As best as I can tell, the idea behind RSS seems to be that you can see
> if any of your subscribed websites have been updated, without having to
> visit each of them one at a time. (As if that's in some way "hard" or
> something.) Why the heck the article doesn't just /say/ this on line
> one, I don't know. Instead it talks obliquely about how "all new content
> is pushed onto the browser when it becomes available". (Funny, when it
> says a feed reader "regularly checks for updates", that sounds to me
> like a /pull/ model, not /push/...)

It's time consuming to visit 100 sites to see if there's anything new.  
It's far easier to be alerted when there's something new that might be of 
interest.

>> I have the feed set up in Google Reader so that when you post something
>> new on your blog, I see it as part of the Reader page.
>>
>> That way I don't have to visit your blog to see what's going on in your
>> blog.  I see an item show up in my reading list so, as wikipedia says,
>> I "avoid manually inspecting all of the websites [I] am interested in"
>> and can see what's new.
> 
> So what does that actually look like? I'm still trying to get my head
> around how this actually works. What counts as "new content", how it
> displays all this stuff in an intelligible form, and so on.

Look at the Google Reader tour.

>>>>> I usually visit Tom's Hardware when I want to see what's happening
>>>>> in the hardware world.
>>>>
>>>> I doubt you're going to get that by reading some text on a screen.
>>>
>>> That's why I just built a new PC - to experience the Core i7
>>> first-hand.
>>> :-P
>>
>> So then why bother going to Tom's Hardware again?
> 
> Sarcasm? :-P

Or perhaps to find out what the latest processor is that you might be 
able to afford?
 
>>> The BBC's iPlayer system "works". I mean, it's so horrifyingly blurry
>>> that you sometimes can't see people's faces clearly enough to
>>> recognise who's who, and often the end credits are unreadable. But
>>> technically that still counts as "works", right?
>>
>> I don't know what kind of connection you use, but I stream on iPlayer
>> occasionally from halfway around the world (did that with last night of
>> the proms IIRC) and projected it onto a 10' screen.  Didn't look
>> particularly blurry to me.
> 
> Want to bet that the BBC has servers all over the world?

So you just happened to get a crappy connection, while I got a good one?

> With the latest update to our set top box, we can actually access
> iPlayer and display it on a real TV. I can actually compare the recorded
> TV broadcast directly next to the iPlayer version of the exact same
> program. And let me tell you, the image quality is incomparable. (And
> that's only SD, not HD.)

Then your eyes are better than mine, or you got a really crappy 
connection.

> On top of that, at peak times iPlayer becomes almost unusable. It
> freezes constantly. I'm not sure whether it's the BBC servers or the ISP
> network that can't keep up, but you just can't watch anything. But then,
> if you select "high quality mode", then it runs like that all the time.
> 
> I don't think an 8 Mbit/sec Internet connection would be considered
> especially slow...

And yet I apparently get a better picture at half the speed from the 
other side of the planet....

>>> I just looked it up. The transfer rate of a DVD is 10.5 mbit/sec. The
>>> maximum broadband speed you can get is 8 mbit/sec. So... does that
>>> mean that people in America have something faster than ADSL or
>>> something?
>>
>> I don't - I have 3 Mbps down ADSL.  I have to not be doing other things
>> with the network connection when I'm streaming Netflix, but I do get a
>> high quality HD image with 5.1 sound with programmes that include it.
> 
> The sound isn't the problem, it's the video. Sound is easily streamable.
> But I'm baffled as to how you can download video in anything approaching
> real-time, unless the quality is diabolically poor.

Except that it isn't.  Part if it is called compression.

>> But more to the point, do you now understand what streaming is?
> 
> Yes. Although I'm still puzzled as to how anybody could make money out
> of selling such poor quality stuff...

Convenience is a huge motivational driver for consumers.  But more to the 
point, most people don't see the quality as being "poor".

Jim

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