XML Not good for Big Files (vs Flat Files)

[Kent Paul Dolan]

or indirectly quoted someone who said :

Cut it out. That is not the issue and you know it. You are just
being obtuse.

Roedy, as long as you try to defend your positions by posting
obvious falsehoods, people are going to correct you.

Cope.

Be happy they're polite about it, as you abuse your "authority
figure" reputation to try to pass off FUD as fact far too often.

xanthian.

 

[Roedy Green]

Roedy, as long as you try to defend your positions by posting
obvious falsehoods, people are going to correct you.

You are pulling my leg. You are just playing lawyer if you think by
in-quotes "sounds" I meant pulsations of air.

 

[Roedy Green]

Roedy, as long as you try to defend your positions by posting
obvious falsehoods, people are going to correct you.

How about you quote one precise sentence you claim is a falsehood.

Also state in your own words what you think that sentence means.

I would like to know if you are objecting to my language or to my
understanding.

From my point of view, this is all rather silly since I was originally
asking a question, not making a statement. Mr. McDonaugh was jerking
my chain by pretending not to understand the question and by working
overtiime to find clever ways to misinterpret my words. His intent
was mockery. He a sour old fart, but a clever and knowledgeable one,
so I don't plonk him.

 

[Andrew McDonagh]

snipped


From my point of view, this is all rather silly since I was originally
asking a question, not making a statement. Mr. McDonaugh was jerking
my chain by pretending not to understand the question and by working
overtiime to find clever ways to misinterpret my words. His intent
was mockery.

Seriously Roedy, on this occasion I wasn't pulling anything - chain
included. I simply didn't 'get' what it was you were trying to say.

He a sour old fart, but a clever and knowledgeable one,
so I don't plonk him.

Damn, as my school teachers used to tell my parents, I 'must try harder'
in future

;-)

 

[Roedy Green]

That is not how cellphones talk to the internet anymore is it? Surely
there is some digital protocol. Does it do compression?

That was my original question. Let me restate it yet again in more
detail.

Consider a NAMPS analog cellphone system. How would you connect to
the Internet using it? It is designed for voice only, so you pretty
well have to get a traditional phone-type modem to create some signals
in the voice frequency band that you feed to the broadcast circuit in
the cell phone, much as if they were coming from the microphone.

You take digital data, put it into the modem to a create voiceband
frequency analog signal.Each cell phone temporarily has its own narrow
band carrier that it broadcasts its signal on. The various broadcasts,
each at different frequencies get reconstituted at the tower and fed
into the land line phone system. Eventually a modem at the IAP
decodes the modem's signal to get the PPP stream. Phew!

Consider a GSM cell phone system. It works much the same way except it
uses Time Division Multiplexing. The broadcast circuit in the phone
has to sample the analog signal at precise intervals and chirp out a
tiny blip sampling of the analog signal, in a process similar to
analog to digital conversion.

Now consider a CDMA system. It is a spread spectrum digital
technology. It could be considered a wireless packet network. It is
designed to deliver packets of digital information, not an analog
signal. You could use it to deliver packets of digitised voice or
digitised phone-modem signals as in the old days.

However, I would think you could handle Internet access more
efficiently by hooking directly into the cell-phone's packet system.
Then it could get very high burst speeds when the air were clear, much
higher than the fixed modem band. Doing it that way would also avoid
the bandwidth overhead of the phone modem. You are sending the bits
direct into the broadcast circuits, not a digitization of a modulation
encoding of the bits. Surely that would make more efficient use of
the bandwidth..

The bits could be delivered direct to an IAP from the cell phone
tower. They would not be sent as is traditional as modem-encoded
dial-up phone calls to an IAP. This would allow you to offer much
high speed Internet connection than you could via dial-up.

So my question was how widespread is such technology?

I have noticed in local cafes they advertise "wireless Internet"
connection. I think what they do is have a local LAN with a wireless
transceiver, and you need a wireless LAN card to use it in your
laptop. Add VIOP to that, and you could call that a flavour of cell
phone. This of course gives you much faster access than you could get
with a cell connection and a dial up account at an IAP.

It looks as though LAN and cell phone technologies are beginning to
merge. The cell phone people to create more bandwidth will need to put
their towers closer together and lower the power of the transceivers.
Keep that up and you end up with something you can't tell apart from a
wireless LAN.

So to reiterate my question, is compression a built-in feature of
digital cell phone connections?

 

[Kent Paul Dolan]

How about you quote one precise sentence you claim is a falsehood.

Sure, here's a whole paragraph of FUD you were forced immediately
to recant, by others pointing out, with examples, that you were dead
wrong:

"I would have thought with all the improvements in CPU power that by
now transmissions would be routinely compressed. But they are not,
ONLY when the file can be precompressed, such as program downloads.
Nobody compresses JSP on the fly. Nobody even precompresses HTML."

Don't argue with me Roedy. Nobody ever wins at that game.

HTH

xanthian.

 

[Roedy Green]

Sure, here's a whole paragraph of FUD you were forced immediately
to recant, by others pointing out, with examples, that you were dead
wrong:

"I would have thought with all the improvements in CPU power that by
now transmissions would be routinely compressed. But they are not,
ONLY when the file can be precompressed, such as program downloads.
Nobody compresses JSP on the fly. Nobody even precompresses HTML."

Don't argue with me Roedy. Nobody ever wins at that game.

FUD stands for Fear Uncertainty and Doubt. It is was a sales
technique IBM used to trash its competitors. Is that what you meant
to accuse me of?

Or did you merely wish to accuse me of making a statement that was not
true?

 

[Kent Paul Dolan]

FUD stands for Fear Uncertainty and Doubt.

Only in a narrow sense, but yes.

It is was a sales
technique IBM used to trash its competitors.

And dozens of other and broader uses since:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FUD

More to the point, it has become a more
polite synonym for "B.S." in modern use.

Is that what you meant to accuse me of?

Of course; that is entirely suitable for falsehood
spreading by authority figures:

Fear: of contradicting a well-known authority figure.
Uncertainty: of the true facts in the matter once
an authority figure states something contradicting
those true facts.
Doubt: "Could the authority figure know something
that I don't?"

Or did you merely wish to accuse me of
making a statement that was not true?

Oh, that is already proved, but you've changed the
subject rather than admit your habitual conduct as
accused and, since you denied it, then easily
demonstrated from the very same thread.

Don't argue with me, Roedy.
Nobody _ever_ wins that game.
It's just a fast way to a damaged reputation.
Tell the nice people you're sorry, instead.

HTH

xanthian.

 

[Roedy Green]

Don't argue with me Roedy. Nobody ever wins at that game.

Don't be so pompous. You are just begging for someone to humiliate
you.

 

[Kent Paul Dolan]

Don't be so pompous.

Says the man still evading confessing his just
documented habit of posting falsehoods as fact

You are just begging for someone to humiliate you.

Last happened in 1990 or so, in the rec.arts.sf reorg
debacle. Care to push your luck, Roedy? Or are you
going to suck it up and confess that you are wrong
not merely in detail but in general?

Don't argue with me Roedy.
Nobody _ever_ wins at that game.
You have nothing to win, and your reputation to lose.
Listen to it eroding away as you continue to dodge
admitting your well-documented guilt here in public.
Rot, rot, rot. Crumble, crumble, crumble.

xanthian; it helps to remember, I do this for fun..

===== selected archival quality quote =====

[to somebody attempting a trans-newsgroup fracas
with Kent:]
if you are going to crosspost to t.b in an
attempt to win a pissing contest with one of
usenet's longest running stubborn, insane
hyperlexic bulldogs, then at least be
interesting or clever or amusing as you go about
it.
-- astri <[email protected]>

 

[Roedy Green]

Last happened in 1990 or so, in the rec.arts.sf reorg
debacle. Care to push your luck, Roedy? Or are you
going to suck it up and confess that you are wrong
not merely in detail but in general?

what a conceited asshole! No wonder you win every argument, people
plonk you in disgust.

 

[Roedy Green]

Last happened in 1990 or so, in the rec.arts.sf reorg
debacle.

You are delusional. Since there is no judge of who "wins" arguments,
you are under the delusion you brought everyone around to you point of
view. You are preposterously full of yourself.

 

[Roedy Green]

"I would have thought with all the improvements in CPU power that by
now transmissions would be routinely compressed. But they are not,
ONLY when the file can be precompressed, such as program downloads.
Nobody compresses JSP on the fly. Nobody even precompresses HTML."

My first three lines are true, and it is also true than JSP and HTHL
are still not routinely precompressed.

I was not claiming it was impossible to compress JSP on the fly or
precompress HTML since I have so many times before called for it.

My error was not knowing that Google had started using compression. I
believed that it was still considered too expensive to do even though
I suspected it would pay or itself in bandwidth costs.

This is an simple error, not some nefarious attempt to mislead people
as you would have it.

"Knowledge keeps no better than fish."
~ Alfred North Whitehead

 

[Kent Paul Dolan]

what a conceited asshole!

We'll notice that i never mentioned
_who_ would be destroying your reputation.
I never have to do the job myself, I work on
the "enough rope" plan.

Hint: it's the fellow who's run out of vocabulary,
and started spewing obscenities in sheer
incompetence to do otherwise. It's the fellow
whose falsehood-posting behavior has just been
documented for all to confirm, yet still will not
apologize for that behavior.

And by the way, my reputation in the "conceited"
field, while abundant, has no chance, ever, of
holding a candle to your own.

No wonder you win every argument, people
plonk you in disgust.

Really? Astri, who wrote the previously quoted
comment on the utility of trying to "win" an
argumeht with me at least a decade ago, still
reads what I write. I have no idea _why_, but
she does.

Moreover, my postings, despite that I've been
pillorying malefactors such as you prove
yourself to be for about two decades on
Usenet, still seem to find _plenty_ of
responses. A search on my full name will
easily document that point.

Now, once more, when are you going to find
sufficient manhood to simply confess your
ugly and frequent habit of posting falsehoods
as truth, under the shelter of your reputation
as a "well respected authority", in hopes of
bullying those who oppose you?

Surely you don't think you're going to get off
the hook on this issue by screaming
obscenities at a retired submariner, who can
curse rings around you, and ignore your
cursing as kindergarden-level efforts, but no
longer feels the need for frequently spewing
obscenities in times of stress?

Surely you didn't think you were going to get a
break merely because your life circumstances
rate several uncontested choruses of "poor,
poor, pitiful me"? So do mine, though I may
well outlive you despite them.

HTH

xanthian.

Ironic that you should start screaming
obscenities under a retitled subject
"about learning manners", but then i
guess you're a slow study in that
regard.

 

[Alex Hunsley]

what a conceited asshole!

We'll notice that i never mentioned
_who_ would be destroying your reputation.
I never have to do the job myself, I work on
the "enough rope" plan. [snip]
Surely you didn't think you were going to get a
break merely because your life circumstances
rate several uncontested choruses of "poor,
poor, pitiful me"? So do mine, though I may
well outlive you despite them.

<bemused>
I can't see anything Roedy has written that could warrant this outburst
in response.
</bemused>

 

[Kent Paul Dolan]

You are delusional.

Probably not, though my housemate is. I'm pretty
mentally ill, but not in ways that have any import
in this discussion.

Since there is no judge of who "wins" arguments,
you are under the delusion you brought everyone
around to you point of view.

Well, no.

So, first you contend that I _do_ win arguments,
because I'm so conceited that people refuse to read
any longer what I write, then you contend that I _do
not_ win arguments, since I'm delusional in claiming
to win arguments, because I think I brought everyone
around to my point of view?

Are you schizophrenic this much very often?

Point of fact, most people who try to win arguments
with me, instead leave the newsgroups in which we
meet, never to return. I have no delusion of having
"brought them around", merely of having defeated
them soundly and publically.

Trying to win an argument with someone who confronts
your misstatements with facts easily checked by
onlookers, at every turn, isn't sane behavior, and
the unsane have trouble prevailing in arguments in
any venue.

Most of these people who choose to argue on when
their errors have been documented to them and others
suffer from some mix of invincible ignorance,
pathological lying, or severe sociopathy, though
sheer (formally defined) stupidity does enter the
mix off and on.

I'd take the trouble to name dozens of names as
examples, but then you can do web searches as well
as I can, and I don't need to convince myself of the
truths of history, or dwell overlong on past
victories, so I don't intend to waste the time
myself.

You are preposterously full of yourself.

Says the man who still refuses to admit his
behavior is exactly as he has been accused
of behaving, even when it is quoted back to
him word for word.

Rave on, Roedy, you have only yourself to destroy
by your current behavior. I certainly don't hold your
reputation at any high value, and the more of this
dodging of taking responsibility for your actions you
provide for review by onlookers, the less value you
must set on that reputation yourself, and the more
damage you do to it, and the more quickly that
damage occurs.

Apologize to the nice people Roedy, it's your only
hope, and it will make the next time so _much_
easier.

HTH

xanthian, finding joy at the same old chores,
applying social feedback as needed to assure
that actions have appropriate consequences.

 

[Oliver Wong]

Roedy Green schrieb:
I did not contest this in any way.

No, you didn't. And when I pointed out that google uses gzip, it was not
meant as an attack.

Let me quote it. There are over 200 messages in that argumentative
thread, so I don't blame you for overlooking one. [...]

I did read this message, and I did notice your enjoyment That's why I
agree that you didn't contest my point.

Maybe I should have written "Yes, you didn't"? Stupid ambiguious natural
languages English is not my native language.

When someone says a statement that contains a negation, I've found that
different English speakers have different interpretation of what "yes" and
"no" means.

Person 1: "Not A?"
Person 2: "Yes."
Interpretation 1: "Yes A".
Interpretation 2: "Yes, not A."


Person 1: "Not A?"
Person 2: "No."
Interpretation 1: "Not A".
Interpretation 2: "No, A."

Personally, I prefer interpretation 2. That is, I'm answering your
question, rather than stating the truth value of A itself. But when I speak,
I try to be explicit and repeat person's claim, e.g. "Yes, not A." or "No,
A."

In your case, Timmo, you used interpretation 1 ("No" to mean agreement),
but you followed it with the repetition ("You didn't"), so I managed to
understand what you meant.

Anyway, all that to say even the native English speakers seem to have
problems with this ambiguity.

- Oliver

 

[Roedy Green]

In Roedy's case, with his in excess of 30,000 archived postings,
that would become a lifetime project. Better to cure the problem
at its source, and break him of his habit of stating falsehood and
speculation as fact in the heat of trying to win arguments.

It would be wonderful if I were incapable of stating anything false
about computers. I could make enough money to buy any computer I
wanted, with change left over to end hunger.

You are making some invalid assumptions:

1. If you disagree with what I say, it is necessarily false.

2. If it is indeed false, that I secretly know it is false and state
it anyway for some dark motive.

3. That it is possible for me to know substantially more than I do.

4. That if I state something false and someone corrects it, because I
originally said otherwise, people will believe me despite evidence.
You almost seem worried I will hold up knowledge and investigation the
way Aristotle held up knowledge for centuries because he was overly
valued as an authority. The essence of your complaint is that
Aristotle was not infallible enough. That was not the problem. The
problem was his successors refusing to think for themselves. They got
into that predicament partly because Aristotle was so often correct.

5. that everything I say can be categorised as either true of false.
Intelligent people can disagree on the value of something even when
they agree on the basic facts because they value the benefits and
costs differently, e.g. binary vs fluffy XML.

As for the charge of presenting speculation as fact, I will use the
example you brought up. The last time I looked, there was no sign of
HTML compression in routine use. It was not speculating. I was
reporting the observed state of the universe the last time I looked.
As it has a habit of doing, the universe changed. There was no intent
to deceive. Indeed, my intent was to encourage that change. I was
quite surprised it finally changed after a decade of complaining
about it. The point of my post got lost in all the ad hominem
analysis. I was calling for efficient and widespread HTML
compression.
It was not about the impossibility of compression.

"Knowledge keeps no better than fish."
~ Alfred Whitehead

 

[Oliver Wong]

You are making some invalid assumptions:
[...]

4. That if I state something false and someone corrects it, because I
originally said otherwise, people will believe me despite evidence.

Well, there is evidence of that happening... See for example:


http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.java.programmer/msg/cc836308fd1ddc43

- Oliver

 

[Roedy Green]

Shut the **** up. You're off your meds and it shows.

He is being rude, but seriously, Kent, you are coming across as an
"angry manic". I am a "happy manic" when I go off. You feel fine,
energised, in charge. It feels like the problem is not you, but the
world. When I go into manic phase, it seems the world has suddenly
become a bunch of stuffed shirt stick in the muds. I'm fine, better
than fine, brimming with good will toward all the people complaining
about me. Angry manics are perfectionistic, and let everyone know
they need to shape up. I am in a bleak phase right now.

The problem is when you go manic, social interactions get very
problematic very quickly. Other people can't handle you. They may even
be afraid of you.

When you take lithium carbonate or one of the newer drugs, it chops
off the manic high, but it also cuts off the deep despair to some
extent which is the other more persistent half of being bipolar. You
might say it is not worth it, but it makes your life more manageable,
less drama but not so contentious. Try it both ways.

It is not a cure. I still have stronger mood swings than most people.
I still think about suicide nearly every day. I still sometimes drive
my room mate nuts when I am so busy "saving the world" I can't see the
point of doing dishes.