narcimund

Ok, I'm in a lazy mood and I've been working hard all day, so here's some more info: Quick definition help: bandwidth is measured in bits (b) per second. Throughput is measured in bytes (B) per day (or month). Bandwidth is the speed which your site can pump data to the Internet. Your webhost probably buys bandwidth in multiples of one megabit per second. A DS1 is 1.5Mb/sec. A DS3 is 45Mb/sec and costs many thousands of dollars per month. Your webhost probably limits individual websites to a tiny fraction of their datacenter's total B/W. Throughput is the total amount of info per day or month before they cut you off or charge you more. "5GB/day" is a throughput measurement, not a bandwidth measurement. (Web hosts play all sorts of games with their numbers and leverage your confusions to make you think you're getting the sky for pennies. If your bandwidth is limited to 128kb/sec (which is likely and PLENTY for 99% of all websites in the world), they can glibly promise throughput of 5GB/day (or 1000GB/day) because that's impossible to reach. You'd have to deliver four times that B/W CONTINUOUSLY to reach that limit and they know you won't.) Webhosts will say, "100MB/sec connection" which means their rack of computers is in a shared datacenter with an ethernet to the router. That DOESN' T mean their net connection is 100MB/sec. For $7.77/month they're probably running you and a thousand others through a single T1. They can promise 1000GB of disk space because disks are cheap, but what kind of disks are they running? IDE or SCSI? Is the array RAID 1 or RAID 5? How many sites are sharing the array and how busy are they? The disk can quickly become the bottleneck if the answers are wrong. (And for $7.77/month, you can bet they're not spending $20,000 on a high end SCSI RAID 5 set.) I won't even get into the different metering methods, upload/download asynchronicity, differential pricing by time of day or day of week. We'll save that for the next lesson. First Class Citizen Twice Over

Do you want the best or the cheapest? Are you asking for a business host or a vanity site host? Do you expect to pay $7.77/month or $2000/month? Are you a heavy tech-support user or are you a do-it-yourselfer? Are you reselling? If so, what kind of IP space are you expecting? Are you planning on secure transactions? Who manages the certificates? Who manages the DNS? What kind of spam and virus protection do you need? Are you going to manage your own server or do you want management? Unix or Windows or Mac? Do you expect multihomed 2nd tier, backed-up power, environmentally controlled datacenters with 24/7 monitoring and auto-backups and failover? Or is somebody's home hobby box on a dynamic IP DSL good enough? Unlimited bandwidth? Do you mean that or do you mean infinite bandwidth or metered bandwidth? Do you mean bandwidth or throughput? Are you willing to pay upcharges as the numbers go up or do you expect to get it for free? Are you a discerning customer or do you think $7.77/month will buy you the stars like the ads promise? When you ask what the best program for building sites is, do you mean the best freeware that anyone can use in 15 minutes, or the hottest suites that professional web developers use? First Class Citizen Twice Over

As the owner of a web hosting company, I thought a lot of these answers were helpful. First Class Citizen Twice Over

I know one skydiver/pre-basejumper from KL visits here, but I don't think there are many others, if any. And Ipoh is a bit of a distance from KL if you're short on time. Don't miss the satay and the mangosteens are definitely a hit. Durian is definitely an acquired taste however... First Class Citizen Twice Over

When I started jumping in the mid 80s, everyone must have forgotten this. On overcast days we'd get our spot from the ground. The DZO would listen for engine sounds and radio up instructions ("5 left.... 5 right... you're overhead....... NOW!") Yes, the obvious did happen. I once jumped when he was hearing a different airplane overhead. We landed about 8 miles away in a field and had to hitchhike back. Nobody was ever hurt from this that I know of, but other monumentally stupid policies at that DZ did cause injuries and worse. That DZO eventually moved into a sponsored condo at a federal agency and is no longer in business. First Class Citizen Twice Over

What the hell is this "official report" everyone yammers about? Who issues "official reports"? What makes it authoritative? Has anyone ever seen such a thing? The "official report" is a fiction people absorbed from some afterschool special and never questioned. There IS no "official report". There is no omnipotent observer who answers our questions in a timely and unbiased manner on form AAA-123 filed with the Skydiving Regulatory Agency. We're on our own, people. YOU'RE on your own. You're an adult and you get to question and consider. Think for yourselves. Ask questions. Speculate. Make connections with your mind. Think. First Class Citizen Twice Over

That's great. I found mine for US$20.00 about 6 months ago. Usually they run US$200.00 or more, although today I found several for under US$150.00. First Class Citizen Twice Over

Day 1: 120 practice jumps Day 2: 139 competition jumps Every one of the 54 competitors got at least 2 jumps on day 2 (I think) and some got up to 6. The launch point is a specially built steel ramp off the balcony of the 73rd floor. The entire floor is one unused empty space and the jumpers have each staked out a patch of the floor for packing in between jumps. The landing area is a relatively small patch of grass in a popular park directly below the twin towers. There's a target laid out and some representatives of the army measure landing accuracy. This phase of the competition is flat-and-stable exits where the competitors are judged on their stability, body position, sub-terminal tracking, proper delay (4 - 5.5 seconds), and landing. So far everyone is doing excellently. I've been posted on the 60th floor to time the delays. I'm strapped to the WRONG side of the safety railing 600 feet up (which is bothering the building's safety and security staff, but we've demonstrated the equipment is adequate) where I can see both the exit 130ft above and the PC pitch 200 - 300ft below. Another judge sitting next to me has a clever optical device for measuring the on-heading performance of the canopy. Usually someone is standing behind us with a video camera. It's a little challenging to get people to volunteer for that job because it's about 1,000,000 degrees (celcius, of course). I'm thrilled to report there have been no significant injuries. We're now in a two-day rest period and we begin again on Jan 1. The next day we move to another building for the second phase. More news later. News Here. First Class Citizen Twice Over

Today the jumping began in Malaysia. Approximately 50 jumpers made about 100 jumps from the 73rd story. I spent the day sitting on a small ledge on the wrong side of the railing outside the 60th floor directly below the exit ramp. As the jumpers flew past I timed and videoed their freefall. Some images available at: http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/031228/ids_photos_wl/r1634563826.jpg http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/031228/ids_photos_wl/r3956212259.jpg http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/031228/ids_photos_wl/r559334364.jpg First Class Citizen Twice Over

We arrived! And absolutely nothing went wrong on the trip. 24hours from front door to hotel room, just like we planned. So far we haven't been able to see any tall buildings, but that's ok cause the mexican food is great. First Class Citizen Twice Over

Getting on a big jet plane in 12 hours. Gonna be on that jet plane for 24 hours. First Class Citizen Twice Over

Not only do they rock, the patches rock too! When I got mine I couldn't believe how great it is. It's an honor to have one. First Class Citizen Twice Over

Has a riser ever broken on a jump? First Class Citizen Twice Over

No it's not. Oregon is bland. It's cold and rainy. No, that's too interesting. It's just grey and drizzly. There's nothing to see here. Everyone go back to your own places. Oregon is full. Applications are not being accepted. We'll keep it on file. No need to try again later. Thank you. First Class Citizen Twice Over

Yes. Because your "marriage2" would by definition be a gay marriage. A same sex partnership. I believe you misunderstood question #2. I was asking if you'd approve just as strongly of marriage2 if INSTEAD of being defined as solely for homosexuals if it allowed heterosexual marriage2 as well. And then the unasked question #3 was going to be, "If the definition allowed both homosexual and heterosexual marraige2s, and if it so happened that heterosexuals happened to choose marriage2s instead of marriages, then eventually marriage would die out. Would you STILL approve?" If not, I think your beliefs are more complicated than you've admitted. First Class Citizen Twice Over

So let's hypothesize that the states were to create a new institution called "marriage2" which is initiated by something called a "wedding2" Let's also imagine that the states defined it thusly: "Marriage2 is a union between two men or between two women which has exactly the same benefits and obligations as marriage." Would that be acceptable to you? Let's modify it slightly for a second question: What if the definition of marriage2 allowed heterosexual couples to participate in marriage2 as well? Would that change your answer? First Class Citizen Twice Over

So if I read you right, the only thing you object to is the shared use of the words "wedding" and "marriage"? First Class Citizen Twice Over

Oh! Thanks for untangling the logic of the Argument from Bigamy. I completely understand the premises and conclusions now. How could I have missed these thoughtful and intelligent connections? First Class Citizen Twice Over

This argument seems to be a very strange and spurious argument: "The opposition might use homosexual marriage as a lever to gain ground on untraditional marriages that even they would oppose. Therefore even the opposition should oppose homosexual marriage." Can someone please untangle the logical error for me? First Class Citizen Twice Over

That would be a big Affirmative. We can all share some satay in the country-which-shall-not-be-named. First Class Citizen Twice Over

Anyone other dropzone.com users on their way? First Class Citizen Twice Over

"Gay"? First Class Citizen Twice Over

Last month I told everyone that my neighbor keeps an arsenal of guns. Well, it's not clear how many guns, but definitely some guns. Maybe a lot! We held a town meeting. At the meeting I annouced that we should burn his house down and take his guns for the safety of everyone's children. Some people said that was illegal, but I think they just hate children. They said they didn't even believe he had guns, but that just proves they hate children. They even argued that that only reason I want to burn his house down is because his dog pooped in my dad's front yard. I think we should burn all their houses down. I got out all my guns so I could burn his house down myself. So we went to burn down his house, or at least I did. A few neighbor kids followed along to watch, so I gave them matches. His dog started barking at us, so I shot the dog. My neighbors shouldn't have dogs. Their dogs keep scaring my dogs. I'm going to kill all their dogs eventually. The kids and I looted the house before burning it down. We got all sorts of great stuff, but didn't find any guns. We burned the house down anyway because we said we would, and now that we've done that nobody can prove there weren't any guns. Besides, I still think my neighbor wanted to buy guns. He had a newspaper spread out on his table with sports store ads showing. Sports stores sell guns! The ads burned with the house, but you can trust me. They really were there! What everyone should know is that my neighbor was really mean to his dog. His yard was a total mess and brought the property values down. He cut in front of old ladies at the movie theater. He really was a bad neighbor! His kids came to school with bruises. Everyone knew he hit his kids and even let his dog bite them. So I was justified in burning his house down! In fact, his kids had such a bad upbringing that they act out all the time. Now that I'm bringing them up, I have to smack them around sometimes. The school principal has called me about the bruises, but I tell them it's only because my neighbor taught them so badly. I have to teach them a lesson now and then. I told the principal I'd burn his house down if he caused trouble and now he doesn't bother me any more. When I can't keep an eye on the kids I just have my dogs watch them. The dogs bite the kids whenever they try to get away. I've trained them really well. The kids have asked me if they can have their own dog and I think I might let them have one, but I'm going to train it myself. My neighbor finally showed up today. I think he was at the sports store looking at guns. Boy was he surprised when he saw what I'd done! I've got him locked up in my basement. That'll teach him to abuse his kids! First Class Citizen Twice Over

No! Whatever you do don't do that. We've been ordered never to ask why things like this happen. We've also been ordered not to even discuss them. Don't even THINK about it. First Class Citizen Twice Over

I believe it's now a federal crime to mention the constitution or the protections it used to provide. Please be more careful next time. First Class Citizen Twice Over