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On 03/02/2012 02:48 AM, Darren New wrote:
> "No, I mean equipment. Anything over $50K? If so, we need to budget it."
> :-)
That's more than our entire IT budget for a year. As in, the entire
corporation.
Then again, I think it may also be more *profit* than we make in a year,
so... :-P
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>> ...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?
Well, for one thing, it tells me that now Christmas is over and it's
February, I really ought to start applying for jobs again. I haven't
done that in ages...
>>> 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.
Not something I've ever heard of, but sure. That sounds like it might be
much more enlightening than Wikipedia.
>> 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.
100 sites?! o_O
Damn, you actually follow that much stuff? Jees...
>>>>>> 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?
For that, I go to various shopping websites. I visit Tom's Hardware to
find out which products have good performance.
>> 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?
Or the BBC offers different quality levels in different parts of the
world? Heck, maybe they're even using a different codec or something? I
don't know.
>> 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.
Yes. Because it's the connection that determines the picture quality,
not the sender. Oh, wait...
>> 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....
*sigh*
Do you want me to go grab a frame? Would that make you happy?
>> 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.
Sure, it's all compressed. But that almost always means lossy
compression. You have to trade how much bandwidth you have for what
level of picture quality you want. And that's the problem - it seems
that to stream realtime over the Internet, you have to accept really low
picture quality.
>>> 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".
Well, FM radio isn't exactly "high fidelity", and yet it's quite popular.
Then again, FM isn't so bad as to render the content /unrecognisable/.
Right, let me go grab a frame from iPlayer...
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On 02/02/2012 10:24 AM, Invisible wrote:
> 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.
There is free software you can use that will download and save the
streaming media to your hard drive. So that you can watch or listen to
the programmes without all those buffering waits.
--
Regards
Stephen
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On 03/02/2012 12:45 PM, Stephen wrote:
> On 02/02/2012 10:24 AM, Invisible wrote:
>> 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.
>
> There is free software you can use that will download and save the
> streaming media to your hard drive. So that you can watch or listen to
> the programmes without all those buffering waits.
Oh, iPlayer lets you do that anyway. But yeah, it would be kinda useful
if I could do that to YouTube. (E.g., there used to be a video of a
really great performance on a Wurlitzer. It's now vanished...)
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On 03/02/2012 12:58 PM, Invisible wrote:
>
> Oh, iPlayer lets you do that anyway. But yeah, it would be kinda useful
> if I could do that to YouTube. (E.g., there used to be a video of a
> really great performance on a Wurlitzer. It's now vanished...)
http://www.youtubedownloadersite.com/
--
Regards
Stephen
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Le 2012-02-03 04:22, Invisible a écrit :
>> I have absolutely never
>> had to use the $ key on my keyboard, unless I was programming in Perl.
>
> This comment makes the whole discussion worth it! :-D
>
>>>> "In another building" DOES NOT mean "over the Internet". Private data
>>>> circuits predate the internet, and no company would use the Internet to
>>>> link two data centres together.
>>>
>>> How is that even *possible*? It's not like you can just go to the
>>> hardware store and buy 25km of copper wire and then put it into the
>>> ground with a shovel on your day off or something...
>>
>> You don't do it yourself, unless you are in a campus environment and can
>> easily rip up the parking lot and lay down your own fibre or copper.
>>
>> Step 1. Call your telco rep and order a circuit between site A and
>> site A.
>> Step 2. Telco will forward the request to a planner who will determine
>> if the existing cabling between both sites and central offices (CO) has
>> enough available bandwidth.
>> Step 3a. If not, the planner will forward the request to their
>> infrastructure group who will get diging permits from the
>> city/county/whatever and lay down new bundles of cables.
>> Step 3b. If the answer is yes, or once the new cables have been laid,
>> the telco planner will forward your request to an enabler who will
>> configure the CO switches to map the circuit from Site A's demarcation
>> point to Site B's demarcation point.
>> Step 4. Technicians will come on site, at both locations, and terminate
>> the circuit from their demarc point to the exact rack you ask them to.
>> Step 5. You plug in the circuit in your equipment (router, switch, or
>> mainframe front-end-processor, to name a few)
>>
>> Tada!
>>
>> Usually, all of this is done for a small nominal fee. Any work they have
>> to do between demarc points will be undertaken at their own expense,
>> which they will recoup on your monthly usage bill, of course.
>>
>> By the way, if you ordered an "internet" link, the exact same steps
>> would have to take place, except that they would be duplicated for site
>> A to ISP and ISP to site B, and then the ISP would add its own routers
>> at both ends and charge you twice as much and more for the "managed
>> services".
>
> Think is, if you order an Internet link, the telco has to run a few
> hundred yards of cable to the nearest junction box at one end, and a few
> hundred yards at the other end.
Which is exactly what I have described above, except the dealing with
the telco is done by the ISP's engineers, not you.
> If you want a dedicated circuit from one
> end to the other without going via the Internet, they have to run
> several miles of cable just for you. Who the /hell/ can afford that? o_O
>
No. No. No. No. What makes you think they would have to lay more cable
for a dedicated circuit than for an internet connection? Re-read step 2.
A dedicated circuit from my company's site A to site B goes:
Site A -> Telco CO 1 -> Telco Cloud -> Telco CO 2 -> Site B.
An Internet VPN goes:
Site A -> Telco CO 1 -> Telco Cloud -> Telco CO 3 -> ISP -> Telco CO 3
-> Telco Cloud -> Telco CO 2 -> Site B.
Now, can you see that connecting to an ISP is effectively ordering TWO
dedicated circuits instead of one?
Using an Internet VPN only makes sense when the costs of a dedicated
cricuits becomes prohibitive and you must share the cost with others, at
the expense of latency and garanteed bandwidth.
--
/*Francois Labreque*/#local a=x+y;#local b=x+a;#local c=a+b;#macro P(F//
/* flabreque */L)polygon{5,F,F+z,L+z,L,F pigment{rgb 9}}#end union
/* @ */{P(0,a)P(a,b)P(b,c)P(2*a,2*b)P(2*b,b+c)P(b+c,<2,3>)
/* gmail.com */}camera{orthographic location<6,1.25,-6>look_at a }
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> What makes you think they would have to lay more cable
> for a dedicated circuit than for an internet connection?
The fact that rather than connecting you to an existing circuit, they're
building a brand new one from scratch.
> A dedicated circuit from my company's site A to site B goes:
>
> Site A -> Telco CO 1 -> Telco Cloud -> Telco CO 2 -> Site B.
If it goes through their main cloud, it isn't a dedicated circuit. It's
a shared circuit.
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Le 2012-02-03 09:49, Invisible a écrit :
>> What makes you think they would have to lay more cable
>> for a dedicated circuit than for an internet connection?
>
> The fact that rather than connecting you to an existing circuit, they're
> building a brand new one from scratch.
I never said they would build a new one from scratch, unless there was
no bandwidth available on their existing infrastructure.
>
>> A dedicated circuit from my company's site A to site B goes:
>>
>> Site A -> Telco CO 1 -> Telco Cloud -> Telco CO 2 -> Site B.
>
> If it goes through their main cloud, it isn't a dedicated circuit. It's
> a shared circuit.
You can have dedicated bandwidth allocated to you on a shared physical
circuit. For example, on a DWDM link, if I assing the 720nm frequency
to you, and the 680nm frequency to me, we would both have dedicated
bandwidth on that fibre strand as it is physically impossible for our
signals to suddenly merge or impact the other. Likewise for TDM
circuits, where each fram is divided into timeslots, and each customer
is allocated a certain amount of timeslots. There is no possibility of
overlap or oversubscription.
A "shared" bandwdith scenario would be ATM, Frame-Relay SVCs, X.25,
etc... where packets are sent through the cloud on a
first-come-first-serve basis and where there is the possibility of
oversubscription.
I apologize for using the word dedicated, instead of point-to-point.
--
/*Francois Labreque*/#local a=x+y;#local b=x+a;#local c=a+b;#macro P(F//
/* flabreque */L)polygon{5,F,F+z,L+z,L,F pigment{rgb 9}}#end union
/* @ */{P(0,a)P(a,b)P(b,c)P(2*a,2*b)P(2*b,b+c)P(b+c,<2,3>)
/* gmail.com */}camera{orthographic location<6,1.25,-6>look_at a }
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On 2/3/2012 6:49, Invisible wrote:
> If it goes through their main cloud, it isn't a dedicated circuit. It's a
> shared circuit.
SONET. That's what it's for. It's dedicated isochronous bandwidth on a
shared circuit, designed to let you merge them together onto a faster
circuit and back out again.
You think when you make an ISDN call you're not getting a 64kbps dedicated
circuit for the duration of the call?
In any case, when you lay cable, you lay down way more than you need,
because the cost of the physical cable is trivial. THe first guy who asks
for a connection causes 900 pairs to be laid. The next 899 require none of
that work.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
People tell me I am the counter-example.
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On 2/3/2012 4:58, Invisible wrote:
> Oh, iPlayer lets you do that anyway. But yeah, it would be kinda useful if I
> could do that to YouTube. (E.g., there used to be a video of a really great
> performance on a Wurlitzer. It's now vanished...)
It is called, not surprisingly, "Download Helper"
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
People tell me I am the counter-example.
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