Each time I read a wireless charging article I find people who seem incapable of believing how simply most consumers will use this technology. Consumers don't want wireless charging primarily for use at a coffee shop, or on the bus, or in a train. They aren't, for the most part, interested in the ability to top off at the airport. No, for all of those things consumers have always demanded enough battery life to make it through the day without needing to recharge. Preferably several days. Most phones deliver, at least for the right usage patterns.
Wireless charging is all about forgetting to charge at home, and the inconvenience of 25 different chargers. Sitting next to me are propretary chargers for proprietary devices. A digital SLR. A digital point and shoot. An old cell phone. A new cell phone. A camcorder. Some regular AA's for my Apple wireless keyboard. The number of wall warts and specialty cables is astounding and annoying. Even if all the tech wasn't a disaster, sometimes I'm just tired and forget to charge my phone overnight.
This is why wireless is such a sexy idea. Imagine a wireless charging pad where you store your cameras, and one on your bedside table. You just toss your phone or cameras on it at night, wake up and it is charged. No plugging in cables. No row of wall warts. No incompatible battery chargers. No running out of outlets along a segment of counter.
Wireless charging's killer app is at home. One charging "area" for multiple devices. Make it cheap enough I can afford one by my desk, in my kitchen, and at my night stand and my gizmos will never run out of juice again, and topping off at a coffee shop, airport, or other place will diminish in need.
I worked on ATM networks in the past, which had resource reservation that first did not work the way anyone who used it expected, and second was turned off (well, ignored, really) in any operating network I ever saw because when push came to shove and the network had to be upgraded or oversubscribed, oversubscribed won every time.
I worked on MPLS networks, with resource reservation that had the exact same issues as the ATM networks, recreated anew with an "updated" protocol. While I've seen a few more networks using it, in every case engineers have also hand worked around it due to both limitations in the protocol and business realties.
I worked on VoIP that used resource reservation protocols, and in every single case once operational realities came into play it was found to cause problems and resource reservation was removed.
Resource reservation is not a new concept in packet based networks. It's been around at least 25 years that I know of, probably longer. These new "protocols and standards" are rehashing old ideas. The problem is they flat out don't work. To get the same reliability as TDM, it turns out (more or less) you get the same efficiency as TDM. Since folks were upgrading to packet to increase efficiency, this is almost never good enough.
Also, I will guarantee you that the switches will be using off the shelf silicon. They will take standard ethernet chips from the usual set of vendors and the only thing new here will be some custom software to speak these new protocols and configure the queues on the chips. These protocols will be poorly tested in the real world, since they only apply to broadcast TV, which is a niche application.
Network Architect here, who's worked on many varied systems. I predict what the consumer will see is a drop in reliability.
Real time communication is just that, real time. Gear of old (5ESS switches, TDM networks, Coax analog video switchers) were actually built around this notation from the ground up, and many design decisions were made to keep things operating at all costs. Of course, this added cost and complexity.
Packet based networks were built on the assumption that losing data was a-ok. Packet drops are how problems are signaled. Protocols are just barely in some cases starting to figure out how to properly deal with this for real time situations, and largely the approach is to still throw bandwidth at the problem.
So yes, running one 100Gbe cable will be cheaper in the future, but it's going to introduce a host of new failure modes that, no offense, you probably don't understand. Heck, most "Network Architects" sadly don't understand, not knowing enough about the outgoing or incoming technology. However I've seen the studies, and it's not pretty. VoIP is not as reliable as circuit switched voice, but it's pretty darn close as it's got more mature codecs and low bandwidth. iSCSI is laughably unreliable compared to even fiber channel connections, much less some kind of direct connection methodology. The failure mode is also horrible, a minor network blip can corrupt file systems and lock up systems so they need a reboot. Of course, it's also a straight up redundancy thing; when you're covering the Super Bowl having every camera feed leave the building on a single cable sounds like a great cost and time reducer, until it fails, or someone cuts it, or whatever, and you lose 100% of the feeds, not just one or two.
With the old tech the engineering happened in a lab, with qualified people studying the solution in detail, and with reliability as a prime concern for most real time applications. With the new tech, folks are taking an IP switch and IP protocol, both of which were designed to lose data as a signally mechanism and who's #1, #2, and #3 design goals were cheap, cheap, and cheap and then multiplexing on many streams to further reduce costs. The engineering, if any, is in the hands of the person assembling the end system which is often some moderately qualified vendor engineer who's going to walk away from it at the end. It's no wonder when they fail it's in spectacular fashion.
I'm not saying you can't move live TV over 100Gbe (and why not over 10Gbe, even 10x10Gbe is cheaper than 100Gbe right now), but if I owned a TV station and my revenue depended on it, I don't think that's the direction I would be going...
To the extent Romney legally made a lot of money, and legally paid his taxes the actual amounts are pretty nearly irrelevant.
However, there is some interesting speculation out there that what's in his returns is in fact he was a tax cheat. You see, in 2009 the IRS had an amnesty program for people with money stashed overseas. We already know Romney had a bunch of money stashed in overseas accounts. The amnesty was because a high percentage of folks with overseas accounts (upwards of 80%, by some estimates) had failed to report their assets in the required way. Since they are the 1%, the Congress passed a "one time out" program, admit breaking the law, but rather than get thrown in jail or pay a penalty simply pay the tax you would have owed.
We don't know if Romney took advantage of the program, but the odds are quite high he did. If so, what he did by participating was admit he had cheated the tax code for some number of years. That would absolutely be relevant for a political candidate.
It's a simple fact that for many design decisions there is no "right" choice. There are often two, or three, or even more acceptable choices.
In closed systems, like OSX and Windows someone gets paid to make a choice from the list of acceptable ones and everyone moves on. Sure, some people complain the other options don't exist, but they get over it and move on.
In open systems, like Linux, you get forks and fragmentation. GNOME, KDE, maybe Unity is now better. Every option gets a voice, and everyone can run what they want. But there's a price. Developer resources have now been divided, and each camp can accomplish less. Fighting over which solution is "better" takes away resources from production work, and build ill will. Application developers are turned off by having to support multiple systems. Even something as simple as writing documentation with screen shots is a pain, which screen shots do you use and how much does that confuse customers?
The Linux ecosystem has been beaten by OSX and Windows using the old fashioned "divide and conquer" method. Except the Linux folks did the division themselves. If we're ever going to see Linux on the desktop be popular the community is going to have to get around one way that's good enough to do things.
There was a fun set of lawsuits a few years back over the lights with the turn signals in them. A supplier developed the tech to put the turn signal behind the mirror and then teamed up with someone (Ford maybe?), others copied, and they sued. Then folks patented the signal on the end of the mirror, then the bottom of the mirror, then IIRC the original partner got in a dispute with the supplier. Huge mess. But if you look at truck mirrors today you'll notice no two do the turn signal in the mirror the same way.
The Apple v Samsung case had two facets to it. The first was Apple alleging infringement of it's "trade dress". This is a claim that Samsung made their products look like Apple products in the general sense, or "rounded rectangles" as everyone likes to call it. For these issues the physical form of the hardware is as important, if not more important than the software elements. The look of the product was decided almost entirely by Samsung, and thus Google and Android are probably largely unaffected by this part of the case.
The second part of the case was patent infringement. Things like the "bounce back" effect when scrolling, or pinch to zoom. These are pure software patents, and as far as I can tell in the core of Android as shipped by Google. Until the patents are invalidated it appears they would apply to any Android phone (at least, where the manufacturer didn't disable those features). Google should be very worried about this aspect of the case, with Apple now having a positive ruling (if only temporary on appeal) they can probably supply some significant pressure to other manufacturers who don't have a spare billion like Samsung and don't want to take the risk.
Note that Google, via Motorola Mobility has sued Apple as well. I suspect what we're going to see over there is either thermonuclear war with both of them attempting to destroy the other, or a new attempt at a settlement and cross licensing. I suspect Apple would cross license a pile of weaker patents (think pinch to zoom) for licenses to a bunch of Motorola stuff if they can hammer out a reasonable DMZ between "Apple Trade Dress" and "Google Trade Dress".
This is round one of what will be a 10 round fight.
Let's run with their argument for a moment, I think it's bogus, but let's assume there is a difference between an App AT&T sells you on the phone, and an App you download/sideload, whatever.
What if I go buy an unlocked phone from the Apple store and ask AT&T to put it on a plan. AT&T hasn't now sold me the application, so preventing Facetime would be preventing me from using the app I acquired and would seem to run afoul of the rules using their logic. However, I'm fairly sure they don't treat unlocked phones any differently.
Their argument is full of holes, and I hope people keep pounding them on it.
If Apple were a monopoly I would get all the geek hand wringing over how serviceable their computers are, but they aren't by a long shot. As such this speculation makes no sense to me. Perhaps it's because I remember a time when a "PC" meant it came from IBM, or one of a few people who licensed bits of the technology from them. There was no choice.
Today I can build my own from Newegg. I can buy a generic pre-made box from Dell or HP, Acer or PacBell, or hundreds of others. I can buy sexy form-factor machines from Apple, Alienware (a dell company), Sony, Asus, and Shuttle. Tablets and phones that didn't exist even 5 years ago are now widely and cheaply available and have more power than a 10 year old "PC". Pogoplug and Raspberry PI are putting computers where people never thought they would exist.
The notion that an Apple Laptop's "sealed" nature is limiting consumer choice is laughable. Consumers have a lot of choice, and they are choosing a product that they like. Perhaps it's not the right laptop for much of Slashdot, but a lot of consumers are voting with their dollars.
It reminds me a lot about cars in the 80's when the new smog standards and computers came out. "I can't work on this in my driveway" all the old guys said. I need expensive computer gear to fix it that only a shop can own. Some of the new parts require specialized tools that are very expensive! Turns out most consumers didn't change their own oil or adjust their own timing, so the fact that the new computers and tech made a tune up every 50,000 or 100,000 miles rather than 3,000 with points and a carburetor more than offset the fact they couldn't work on it themselves. The benefits to consumers greatly outweighed any of the drawbacks.
I think the computer world is making the same transition. I remember a Toshiba laptop circa 1997 that had a NiCad battery that wouldn't even last an hour, and in less than a year of use wouldn't hold a charge at all. I kept two spares when traveling, and swapped them out. The battery better have been user replaceable in that thing. Now, with modern tech, folks are getting 10 hours out of Apple laptops and tablets, and seeing 5-7 year battery life with minimal degradation. People don't buy spare batteries anymore, even when they are modular. Tech has advanced, so now people want the thinner, lighter more than the replaceable battery.
As long as you can go to any of a hundred other vendors and get modular laptops and desktops complaining about one vendor who makes them non-serviceable is stupid. People have choice, and are voting with their dollars.
Last time around there was a question about 40GE or 100GE. Largely (although not exactly) server guys pushed a 40GE standard for a number of reasons (cost, time to market, cabling issues, and bus-throughput of the machines), and the network guys pushed to stay with 100GE. Some 40GE (pre-standard?) made it out the door first, but it's basically not a big enough jump (just LAG 4x10GE cheaper) so there is no real point. 100GE is starting to gain traction as doing a 10x10GE LAG causes reliability and management issues.
This diversion probably delayed 100GE getting to market by 12-24 months, and the vast majority of folks, even server folks, now think 40GE was a mistake.
Why is the IEEE even asking this question again? The results are going to be basically the same, for basically the same reasons. 1Tbe should be the next jump, and they should get working on it pronto.
Haphazard sure, but I think you actually underestimate how resourceful people would be in that situation.
Take food. Will you be able to pop over to McD's and get a burger and fries for $1.99. No way. Totally dependent on the supply chain. Will your grocery store have Cheerios? Probably not. However there is a lot of food still grown and processed locally. So if you live in corn country that may be all you eat for a month. Maybe you live in peanut land and better hope you don't have an allergy. Plenty of simple diesel farm tractors and old pickups that could be put to use transporting the stuff locally. Guess what, with most cars out of commission there's plenty of gas in your local gas station to power them for a long time as well.
EMP's would not take out many small generators, dirtbikes, gokarts, and other assorted engines which have no electronics. Hand tools and such would still work. The amount of crap Americans have in their garages that goes unused with modern conveniences is huge, and would be put to use. Flash drives and optical disks would be largely unaffected. With a small amount of warning precautions could be taken to protect a lot of assets.
Don't get me wrong, such an event would be hugely disruptive. It would take years for life to return to normal. While the impact would be in different areas, Katrina provides some evidence. Would it be worse because less help could come from further away? Sure. Would it be the end of society as we know it? I don't think so at all.
Keeping his source code safe is easy. Write it to optical, flash, and hard drives. Store all three in a faraday cage enclosure that is grounded. If you want to be crazy paranoid pay one of the vault places that keeps it deep underground in a mine converted to storage. Done and done, doesn't even cost that much. Will anyone care should such an event happen? Doubtful.
SSD prices have fallen quickly, while hard drives have gone up. If you don't need large amounts of storage it's better to just go SSD. But what if large amounts of storage are needed?
I would recommend buying an SSD, putting the OS and all applications on it, and then using a magnetic drive as the "users" volume. Any sanely laid out OS makes this very easy. The OS and Apps will load quickly, the large items (like video) will be stored on the cheaper, larger disk storage. No "hybrid" algorithm to worry about working. Two separate parts that can be upgraded independently. No OS support required. Perhaps some acceleration of some small data files will be missed, but the large ones would have never fit in the accelerated flash anyway.
I do think that file systems need to evolve in a new direction. ZFS is a preview in the right direction, but it would be nice to have a file system where you could add ram disk, or flash disk and tell it to be used as a "cache" for underlying disk, write through or write back. Easy to do in software. Plus better backup and replication support. I'd really like to configure my laptop with a 2TB spining disk, 256G super-fast SSD, and give 1G of RAM to the file system. Tell the file system to write everything through to magnetic, cache frequently used in SSD and RAM. When I'm on the hope network replicate the spinning disk to my NAS bit for bit. Perform incremental backups to my cloud backup service when connected to a fast enough network using compressed incremental to save space. Give me all that with ZFS's other features and it would be sysadmin filesystem nirvana...
If you've been in any large business you realize that it operates primarily on Excel spreadsheets being repeatedly e-mailed back and forth. While many of the folks creating these spreadsheets don't even realize it, each of the cells are little algebraic equations. People often ask "what from math class do you use every day", well algebra is an easy one, people write business formulas in Excel.
That could be one place that if it gets broken into everything is lost, or it could be one entity that knows all the dirty little secrets since they know all the sites that authenticate your identity. It could also just be one entity that must be up and available, which is a tall order.
The solution is simple: Public key cryptography.
Most of the people on/. are probably familiar with ssh. A key is generated on the client end. The public material is put on the server end. If the server is compromised nothing bad happens as the attacker now has a public key they can't use to log into any other service.
There is no technological reason the web can't work the same way. There is a lack of agreement on how to do it that is holding us back, and also a User Interface problem in browsers. However it's not hard to imagine a world where a browser generates a key pair, and during the sign up procedure for a web site it transmits the public material. It looks like single sign on to the user, but they didn't have to trust any third parties, and if the web site is broken into the attacker gets no useful data. It could be implemented with x.509 certificates which browsers already have support for, or it could be done as specific form types and key formatting a-la how ssh does it today. Users could create multiple keys if they wanted, and by syncing the private key material between their devices have passwordless access across all their devices.
A small amount of standards work and UI here could make passwords nearly obsolete. Sysadmins don't use telnet and passwords anymore; we need to upgrade users, and the user tools to achieve the same benefits. Single Sign On, and all of its drawbacks, disappear in the process, a win-win!
I've used at least a dozen video conferencing solutions, and Google+ Hangouts seems to work across the most platforms, with some of the highest quality video, and it's free. I can communicate with folks inside and outside of the company without any special clients or problems. It really is a killer video conferencing solution.
But it's buried inside Google+, and I am amazed how many people I meet have no idea it exists, have never tried it, and so on. Everyone I make use it the first time instantly falls in love. Google could easily sell Hangouts as a stand alone video conferencing product.
Which is why I think Google+ may make it yet. There's some really cool stuff buried in it. Not enough to unseat Facebook on its own, but if Facebook stumbles, Google+ could pick up the market. Much like when myspace fell behind Facebook moved in.
I've not understood this argument. If you're disassembling to recycle damage isn't a concern. All of the glued components come apart with a $10 heat gun no problem to separate them for recycling.
I'm confused how being able to take it apart with a screwdriver to recycle is significantly better or worse than taking it apart with a heat gun, particularly if the glued method means the product uses less materials in the first place.
When folks talk about Amtrak, one of the first comments is that it is subsidized. It is, to the tune of 2.6B a year at the current moment.
We spend approximately $150B a year in state and federal money on highway construction and maintenance.
We spend approximately $16B a year operating the FAA and airports, about 3.5B of which is directly spent on facilities construction and maintenance.
All transportation is subsidized. Cost per passenger mile, cost per trip, or other similar metrics are a far better measurement of financial performance. Passenger fairs are also a very interesting thing to look at, if the same subsidy for rail and airports resulted in fares that were 50% less for rail travelers that may be a better subsidy.
The problem in the US with rail is really simple to boil down. Congress mandates Amtrak serve underserved and out of the way communities. Greenwood Mississippi has Amtrak service because the government said they must go there, not because it is the best route, or the most profitable one. At the same time Congress wants Amtrak to be profitable. That's a combo that doesn't work. It could be a profitable service by aligning routes with where people wanted to go, and dumping unprofitable ones. It could serve underserved communities with a subsidy. It can't do both at the same time.
High speed rail is a long term investment problem in the US, and a problem of our red-tape with building things. The transcontinental railroad was built in 6 years, largely with hand labor. California's high speed line is estimated to connect San Francisco to LA by 2030, 18 years from now. Much of this is the ever evil "regulation", however much of that derided regulation is stuff the people voted for in the first place so we don't destroy our environment, and so on. Much of it is time taken up with legal challenges, large and small, wasting time and money in court. We have to take a hard look at this sort of problem, the US is now building infrastructure at a much slower rate than most other western countries, and that's not a way to stay ahead. We can't just throw out the regulations, that will not leave a functioning society, but we need to streamline many of these processes.
Trains can work just fine in the US, and they do in fact operate profitably in several locations today.
I've seen dozens of methods at different companies, but I've only ever seen one that works and it works really well. Many of the top ISP's use a variant of it.
Let the network self document.
What does that mean? Well, typically it means some discipline in how descriptions are written. For instance ISP's will use a standard customer identifier on all ports. An enterprise might just use hostname. From there, tools like Rancid can poll router and switch configs, store them in a version control system, and mail out changes to the entire staff. Rancid is great to use, because it reduces the human work load down to entering a single line for each device (name and OS type), and making sure that the device accepts logins.
Now that all the configs are archived and you have the one true list of devices it's trivial to take that list of devices and feed it to other tools. One of the first might be NetDisco which probes the devices with SNMP and builds adjacency tables, tracks MAC addresses, and so on. From it's database you should be able to locate anything on the network in seconds.
Now that there is a complete picture of the network, it's time for a little scripting. Take the output of Rancid and/or Netdisco, and use it to for instance build an MRTG configuration file, or a list of things for Nagios to probe. It's fairly easy to take the NetDisco adjacencies and run them into a tool like GraphViz to produce a network diagram.
I know of at least two ISP's using this basic formula, and it works really well. Going to an internal web site they can bring up diagrams, usage graphs, MAC tables, IP information and all sorts of other things about any device in the network in seconds. Once devices are in the system it is 100% automated, turn on a new port and it is magically graphed, MAC tracked, and added to the diagrams. Turn it off, it magically goes away. Everything is in version control so old state can be reconstructed. The only human manual intervention is adding/removing one line to the Rancid config when a device is turned up or turned down. I have even seen folks automate that with Netdisco (but, I think that can be problematic, as it's almost circular).
Spreadsheets, Visio diagrams, and the like are always out of date. Someone will always make a change and forget to update it. Some places are only a little out of date, most places are downright wrong. Self documenting is achievable, and always 100% current.
I think we already have the perfect attack plane for this mission, the A-10. It can easily keep up, was designed to visually target, and would obliterate a boat like this in a few shells.
I always find the "sense of entitlement" posts on these threads interesting, because they are both spot on and misplaced at the same time.
If you work an hourly wage job you are being paid for the time you work. You don't get paid for time you're not working. It's entirely reasonable for your employer to say "no personal calls" or "no gmail" while they are paying you to work.
If you work a salaried job, the theory is that the employer is paying you to do a job. "Ship version 1.0 to the customer by next thursday." If you get that done in 20 hours, great. If you get it done in 60 hours, great. If going to meet with the customer gets the job done, do it. If working in your office gets the job done, do it. One of the tests of if a job is salaried or not is if the employee has a significant amount of self direction. For a properly salaried employee if playing your cable bill online means you an sit at your desk and bang out the customer task, or you can knock off early to go to the office and pay it and miss the deadline, and that it's reasonable for your employer to provide that resource than it is ok. Salaried executives get to call home from the corporate jet and move around their personal life so they can meet with a client, and no one dings them for the long distance phone call to their wife.
The problem, in the US, is that many people are misclassified. Most programmers are salaried, but should probably be hourly. If you're told where to be, when to be there, what to do, and how to do it, you're not a salaried professional, you're an hourly professional. Companies prefer to pay salaries because they don't have to pay overtime. Your job takes 50 hours this week there's no hit to the budget for the extra 10.
This also means we don't have enough information to answer the OP's question. Is the OP an hourly, entry level person at a call center paid hourly? If so, his employer is telling him exactly how to do his job, and any personal stuff is off limits 100% of the time. If the OP is a Vice President who is given tasks and deadlines and told to take care of them in the best way possible in their professional opinion, and in their professional opinion paying a bill online, reading some personal e-mail, or keeping up with tech trends by reading slashdot helps get the task done faster/cheaper/better they are generally given that latitude.
The Tely-HD is a stand alone solution that does the same thing.
It's easy to find wall mount units for a TV, I suggest using Monoprice.
Setting the grand parents up with one of these units so they can sit in their living room and use the TV, along with some sort of unit in the kids room is the way to go. The TV can always be easily repurposed later. If you already have a TV adding a Blue-Ray with the capability is a nice way to get Skype now and be able to play Disney movies for the kid later.
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Each time I read a wireless charging article I find people who seem incapable of believing how simply most consumers will use this technology. Consumers don't want wireless charging primarily for use at a coffee shop, or on the bus, or in a train. They aren't, for the most part, interested in the ability to top off at the airport. No, for all of those things consumers have always demanded enough battery life to make it through the day without needing to recharge. Preferably several days. Most phones deliver, at least for the right usage patterns.
Wireless charging is all about forgetting to charge at home, and the inconvenience of 25 different chargers. Sitting next to me are propretary chargers for proprietary devices. A digital SLR. A digital point and shoot. An old cell phone. A new cell phone. A camcorder. Some regular AA's for my Apple wireless keyboard. The number of wall warts and specialty cables is astounding and annoying. Even if all the tech wasn't a disaster, sometimes I'm just tired and forget to charge my phone overnight.
This is why wireless is such a sexy idea. Imagine a wireless charging pad where you store your cameras, and one on your bedside table. You just toss your phone or cameras on it at night, wake up and it is charged. No plugging in cables. No row of wall warts. No incompatible battery chargers. No running out of outlets along a segment of counter.
Wireless charging's killer app is at home. One charging "area" for multiple devices. Make it cheap enough I can afford one by my desk, in my kitchen, and at my night stand and my gizmos will never run out of juice again, and topping off at a coffee shop, airport, or other place will diminish in need.
What a seriously sensible and simple solution. If I could mod up, I would, but I can't so I will reply.
I did, and I saw that part.
I worked on ATM networks in the past, which had resource reservation that first did not work the way anyone who used it expected, and second was turned off (well, ignored, really) in any operating network I ever saw because when push came to shove and the network had to be upgraded or oversubscribed, oversubscribed won every time.
I worked on MPLS networks, with resource reservation that had the exact same issues as the ATM networks, recreated anew with an "updated" protocol. While I've seen a few more networks using it, in every case engineers have also hand worked around it due to both limitations in the protocol and business realties.
I worked on VoIP that used resource reservation protocols, and in every single case once operational realities came into play it was found to cause problems and resource reservation was removed.
Resource reservation is not a new concept in packet based networks. It's been around at least 25 years that I know of, probably longer. These new "protocols and standards" are rehashing old ideas. The problem is they flat out don't work. To get the same reliability as TDM, it turns out (more or less) you get the same efficiency as TDM. Since folks were upgrading to packet to increase efficiency, this is almost never good enough.
Also, I will guarantee you that the switches will be using off the shelf silicon. They will take standard ethernet chips from the usual set of vendors and the only thing new here will be some custom software to speak these new protocols and configure the queues on the chips. These protocols will be poorly tested in the real world, since they only apply to broadcast TV, which is a niche application.
Network Architect here, who's worked on many varied systems. I predict what the consumer will see is a drop in reliability.
Real time communication is just that, real time. Gear of old (5ESS switches, TDM networks, Coax analog video switchers) were actually built around this notation from the ground up, and many design decisions were made to keep things operating at all costs. Of course, this added cost and complexity.
Packet based networks were built on the assumption that losing data was a-ok. Packet drops are how problems are signaled. Protocols are just barely in some cases starting to figure out how to properly deal with this for real time situations, and largely the approach is to still throw bandwidth at the problem.
So yes, running one 100Gbe cable will be cheaper in the future, but it's going to introduce a host of new failure modes that, no offense, you probably don't understand. Heck, most "Network Architects" sadly don't understand, not knowing enough about the outgoing or incoming technology. However I've seen the studies, and it's not pretty. VoIP is not as reliable as circuit switched voice, but it's pretty darn close as it's got more mature codecs and low bandwidth. iSCSI is laughably unreliable compared to even fiber channel connections, much less some kind of direct connection methodology. The failure mode is also horrible, a minor network blip can corrupt file systems and lock up systems so they need a reboot. Of course, it's also a straight up redundancy thing; when you're covering the Super Bowl having every camera feed leave the building on a single cable sounds like a great cost and time reducer, until it fails, or someone cuts it, or whatever, and you lose 100% of the feeds, not just one or two.
With the old tech the engineering happened in a lab, with qualified people studying the solution in detail, and with reliability as a prime concern for most real time applications. With the new tech, folks are taking an IP switch and IP protocol, both of which were designed to lose data as a signally mechanism and who's #1, #2, and #3 design goals were cheap, cheap, and cheap and then multiplexing on many streams to further reduce costs. The engineering, if any, is in the hands of the person assembling the end system which is often some moderately qualified vendor engineer who's going to walk away from it at the end. It's no wonder when they fail it's in spectacular fashion.
I'm not saying you can't move live TV over 100Gbe (and why not over 10Gbe, even 10x10Gbe is cheaper than 100Gbe right now), but if I owned a TV station and my revenue depended on it, I don't think that's the direction I would be going...
I agree mostly with the parent, but not entirely.
To the extent Romney legally made a lot of money, and legally paid his taxes the actual amounts are pretty nearly irrelevant.
However, there is some interesting speculation out there that what's in his returns is in fact he was a tax cheat. You see, in 2009 the IRS had an amnesty program for people with money stashed overseas. We already know Romney had a bunch of money stashed in overseas accounts. The amnesty was because a high percentage of folks with overseas accounts (upwards of 80%, by some estimates) had failed to report their assets in the required way. Since they are the 1%, the Congress passed a "one time out" program, admit breaking the law, but rather than get thrown in jail or pay a penalty simply pay the tax you would have owed.
We don't know if Romney took advantage of the program, but the odds are quite high he did. If so, what he did by participating was admit he had cheated the tax code for some number of years. That would absolutely be relevant for a political candidate.
It's a simple fact that for many design decisions there is no "right" choice. There are often two, or three, or even more acceptable choices.
In closed systems, like OSX and Windows someone gets paid to make a choice from the list of acceptable ones and everyone moves on. Sure, some people complain the other options don't exist, but they get over it and move on.
In open systems, like Linux, you get forks and fragmentation. GNOME, KDE, maybe Unity is now better. Every option gets a voice, and everyone can run what they want. But there's a price. Developer resources have now been divided, and each camp can accomplish less. Fighting over which solution is "better" takes away resources from production work, and build ill will. Application developers are turned off by having to support multiple systems. Even something as simple as writing documentation with screen shots is a pain, which screen shots do you use and how much does that confuse customers?
The Linux ecosystem has been beaten by OSX and Windows using the old fashioned "divide and conquer" method. Except the Linux folks did the division themselves. If we're ever going to see Linux on the desktop be popular the community is going to have to get around one way that's good enough to do things.
Trial by Jury does not mean "trial by 12 random people off the street".
Cases like this could have jury pools drawn from experts, not laymen. That would still be a trial by jury.
There was a fun set of lawsuits a few years back over the lights with the turn signals in them. A supplier developed the tech to put the turn signal behind the mirror and then teamed up with someone (Ford maybe?), others copied, and they sued. Then folks patented the signal on the end of the mirror, then the bottom of the mirror, then IIRC the original partner got in a dispute with the supplier. Huge mess. But if you look at truck mirrors today you'll notice no two do the turn signal in the mirror the same way.
The Apple v Samsung case had two facets to it. The first was Apple alleging infringement of it's "trade dress". This is a claim that Samsung made their products look like Apple products in the general sense, or "rounded rectangles" as everyone likes to call it. For these issues the physical form of the hardware is as important, if not more important than the software elements. The look of the product was decided almost entirely by Samsung, and thus Google and Android are probably largely unaffected by this part of the case.
The second part of the case was patent infringement. Things like the "bounce back" effect when scrolling, or pinch to zoom. These are pure software patents, and as far as I can tell in the core of Android as shipped by Google. Until the patents are invalidated it appears they would apply to any Android phone (at least, where the manufacturer didn't disable those features). Google should be very worried about this aspect of the case, with Apple now having a positive ruling (if only temporary on appeal) they can probably supply some significant pressure to other manufacturers who don't have a spare billion like Samsung and don't want to take the risk.
Note that Google, via Motorola Mobility has sued Apple as well. I suspect what we're going to see over there is either thermonuclear war with both of them attempting to destroy the other, or a new attempt at a settlement and cross licensing. I suspect Apple would cross license a pile of weaker patents (think pinch to zoom) for licenses to a bunch of Motorola stuff if they can hammer out a reasonable DMZ between "Apple Trade Dress" and "Google Trade Dress".
This is round one of what will be a 10 round fight.
Let's run with their argument for a moment, I think it's bogus, but let's assume there is a difference between an App AT&T sells you on the phone, and an App you download/sideload, whatever.
What if I go buy an unlocked phone from the Apple store and ask AT&T to put it on a plan. AT&T hasn't now sold me the application, so preventing Facetime would be preventing me from using the app I acquired and would seem to run afoul of the rules using their logic. However, I'm fairly sure they don't treat unlocked phones any differently.
Their argument is full of holes, and I hope people keep pounding them on it.
You are confusing being first with having a monopoly. They are not the same thing.
I'm sure there will be hundreds of high-res competitors in 1-2 years. Apple just used their might to go there first.
If Apple were a monopoly I would get all the geek hand wringing over how serviceable their computers are, but they aren't by a long shot. As such this speculation makes no sense to me. Perhaps it's because I remember a time when a "PC" meant it came from IBM, or one of a few people who licensed bits of the technology from them. There was no choice.
Today I can build my own from Newegg. I can buy a generic pre-made box from Dell or HP, Acer or PacBell, or hundreds of others. I can buy sexy form-factor machines from Apple, Alienware (a dell company), Sony, Asus, and Shuttle. Tablets and phones that didn't exist even 5 years ago are now widely and cheaply available and have more power than a 10 year old "PC". Pogoplug and Raspberry PI are putting computers where people never thought they would exist.
The notion that an Apple Laptop's "sealed" nature is limiting consumer choice is laughable. Consumers have a lot of choice, and they are choosing a product that they like. Perhaps it's not the right laptop for much of Slashdot, but a lot of consumers are voting with their dollars.
It reminds me a lot about cars in the 80's when the new smog standards and computers came out. "I can't work on this in my driveway" all the old guys said. I need expensive computer gear to fix it that only a shop can own. Some of the new parts require specialized tools that are very expensive! Turns out most consumers didn't change their own oil or adjust their own timing, so the fact that the new computers and tech made a tune up every 50,000 or 100,000 miles rather than 3,000 with points and a carburetor more than offset the fact they couldn't work on it themselves. The benefits to consumers greatly outweighed any of the drawbacks.
I think the computer world is making the same transition. I remember a Toshiba laptop circa 1997 that had a NiCad battery that wouldn't even last an hour, and in less than a year of use wouldn't hold a charge at all. I kept two spares when traveling, and swapped them out. The battery better have been user replaceable in that thing. Now, with modern tech, folks are getting 10 hours out of Apple laptops and tablets, and seeing 5-7 year battery life with minimal degradation. People don't buy spare batteries anymore, even when they are modular. Tech has advanced, so now people want the thinner, lighter more than the replaceable battery.
As long as you can go to any of a hundred other vendors and get modular laptops and desktops complaining about one vendor who makes them non-serviceable is stupid. People have choice, and are voting with their dollars.
Last time around there was a question about 40GE or 100GE. Largely (although not exactly) server guys pushed a 40GE standard for a number of reasons (cost, time to market, cabling issues, and bus-throughput of the machines), and the network guys pushed to stay with 100GE. Some 40GE (pre-standard?) made it out the door first, but it's basically not a big enough jump (just LAG 4x10GE cheaper) so there is no real point. 100GE is starting to gain traction as doing a 10x10GE LAG causes reliability and management issues.
This diversion probably delayed 100GE getting to market by 12-24 months, and the vast majority of folks, even server folks, now think 40GE was a mistake.
Why is the IEEE even asking this question again? The results are going to be basically the same, for basically the same reasons. 1Tbe should be the next jump, and they should get working on it pronto.
Haphazard sure, but I think you actually underestimate how resourceful people would be in that situation.
Take food. Will you be able to pop over to McD's and get a burger and fries for $1.99. No way. Totally dependent on the supply chain. Will your grocery store have Cheerios? Probably not. However there is a lot of food still grown and processed locally. So if you live in corn country that may be all you eat for a month. Maybe you live in peanut land and better hope you don't have an allergy. Plenty of simple diesel farm tractors and old pickups that could be put to use transporting the stuff locally. Guess what, with most cars out of commission there's plenty of gas in your local gas station to power them for a long time as well.
EMP's would not take out many small generators, dirtbikes, gokarts, and other assorted engines which have no electronics. Hand tools and such would still work. The amount of crap Americans have in their garages that goes unused with modern conveniences is huge, and would be put to use. Flash drives and optical disks would be largely unaffected. With a small amount of warning precautions could be taken to protect a lot of assets.
Don't get me wrong, such an event would be hugely disruptive. It would take years for life to return to normal. While the impact would be in different areas, Katrina provides some evidence. Would it be worse because less help could come from further away? Sure. Would it be the end of society as we know it? I don't think so at all.
Keeping his source code safe is easy. Write it to optical, flash, and hard drives. Store all three in a faraday cage enclosure that is grounded. If you want to be crazy paranoid pay one of the vault places that keeps it deep underground in a mine converted to storage. Done and done, doesn't even cost that much. Will anyone care should such an event happen? Doubtful.
Uh, Windows is sane for this purpose, and this is commonly done in corporate environments, keeping all user data on an CIFS share.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/190286/move_your_data_to_a_safer_separate_partition_in_windows_7.html
Basically install windows to C:, the SSD.
Spin up D:, the magnetic storage.
Create D:\Users\
Change the users home directory (My Documents) in the user properties to D:\Users\ (corp environments would be something like \\userserver\Users\).
It's more or less the same thing as changing your home directory path on a Unix machine.
Windows does not like Symlinks.
SSD prices have fallen quickly, while hard drives have gone up. If you don't need large amounts of storage it's better to just go SSD. But what if large amounts of storage are needed?
I would recommend buying an SSD, putting the OS and all applications on it, and then using a magnetic drive as the "users" volume. Any sanely laid out OS makes this very easy. The OS and Apps will load quickly, the large items (like video) will be stored on the cheaper, larger disk storage. No "hybrid" algorithm to worry about working. Two separate parts that can be upgraded independently. No OS support required. Perhaps some acceleration of some small data files will be missed, but the large ones would have never fit in the accelerated flash anyway.
I do think that file systems need to evolve in a new direction. ZFS is a preview in the right direction, but it would be nice to have a file system where you could add ram disk, or flash disk and tell it to be used as a "cache" for underlying disk, write through or write back. Easy to do in software. Plus better backup and replication support. I'd really like to configure my laptop with a 2TB spining disk, 256G super-fast SSD, and give 1G of RAM to the file system. Tell the file system to write everything through to magnetic, cache frequently used in SSD and RAM. When I'm on the hope network replicate the spinning disk to my NAS bit for bit. Perform incremental backups to my cloud backup service when connected to a fast enough network using compressed incremental to save space. Give me all that with ZFS's other features and it would be sysadmin filesystem nirvana...
If you've been in any large business you realize that it operates primarily on Excel spreadsheets being repeatedly e-mailed back and forth. While many of the folks creating these spreadsheets don't even realize it, each of the cells are little algebraic equations. People often ask "what from math class do you use every day", well algebra is an easy one, people write business formulas in Excel.
The answer is easy: Too many eggs in one basket.
That could be one place that if it gets broken into everything is lost, or it could be one entity that knows all the dirty little secrets since they know all the sites that authenticate your identity. It could also just be one entity that must be up and available, which is a tall order.
The solution is simple: Public key cryptography.
Most of the people on /. are probably familiar with ssh. A key is generated on the client end. The public material is put on the server end. If the server is compromised nothing bad happens as the attacker now has a public key they can't use to log into any other service.
There is no technological reason the web can't work the same way. There is a lack of agreement on how to do it that is holding us back, and also a User Interface problem in browsers. However it's not hard to imagine a world where a browser generates a key pair, and during the sign up procedure for a web site it transmits the public material. It looks like single sign on to the user, but they didn't have to trust any third parties, and if the web site is broken into the attacker gets no useful data. It could be implemented with x.509 certificates which browsers already have support for, or it could be done as specific form types and key formatting a-la how ssh does it today. Users could create multiple keys if they wanted, and by syncing the private key material between their devices have passwordless access across all their devices.
A small amount of standards work and UI here could make passwords nearly obsolete. Sysadmins don't use telnet and passwords anymore; we need to upgrade users, and the user tools to achieve the same benefits. Single Sign On, and all of its drawbacks, disappear in the process, a win-win!
I've used at least a dozen video conferencing solutions, and Google+ Hangouts seems to work across the most platforms, with some of the highest quality video, and it's free. I can communicate with folks inside and outside of the company without any special clients or problems. It really is a killer video conferencing solution.
But it's buried inside Google+, and I am amazed how many people I meet have no idea it exists, have never tried it, and so on. Everyone I make use it the first time instantly falls in love. Google could easily sell Hangouts as a stand alone video conferencing product.
Which is why I think Google+ may make it yet. There's some really cool stuff buried in it. Not enough to unseat Facebook on its own, but if Facebook stumbles, Google+ could pick up the market. Much like when myspace fell behind Facebook moved in.
I've not understood this argument. If you're disassembling to recycle damage isn't a concern. All of the glued components come apart with a $10 heat gun no problem to separate them for recycling.
I'm confused how being able to take it apart with a screwdriver to recycle is significantly better or worse than taking it apart with a heat gun, particularly if the glued method means the product uses less materials in the first place.
When folks talk about Amtrak, one of the first comments is that it is subsidized. It is, to the tune of 2.6B a year at the current moment.
We spend approximately $150B a year in state and federal money on highway construction and maintenance.
We spend approximately $16B a year operating the FAA and airports, about 3.5B of which is directly spent on facilities construction and maintenance.
All transportation is subsidized. Cost per passenger mile, cost per trip, or other similar metrics are a far better measurement of financial performance. Passenger fairs are also a very interesting thing to look at, if the same subsidy for rail and airports resulted in fares that were 50% less for rail travelers that may be a better subsidy.
The problem in the US with rail is really simple to boil down. Congress mandates Amtrak serve underserved and out of the way communities. Greenwood Mississippi has Amtrak service because the government said they must go there, not because it is the best route, or the most profitable one. At the same time Congress wants Amtrak to be profitable. That's a combo that doesn't work. It could be a profitable service by aligning routes with where people wanted to go, and dumping unprofitable ones. It could serve underserved communities with a subsidy. It can't do both at the same time.
High speed rail is a long term investment problem in the US, and a problem of our red-tape with building things. The transcontinental railroad was built in 6 years, largely with hand labor. California's high speed line is estimated to connect San Francisco to LA by 2030, 18 years from now. Much of this is the ever evil "regulation", however much of that derided regulation is stuff the people voted for in the first place so we don't destroy our environment, and so on. Much of it is time taken up with legal challenges, large and small, wasting time and money in court. We have to take a hard look at this sort of problem, the US is now building infrastructure at a much slower rate than most other western countries, and that's not a way to stay ahead. We can't just throw out the regulations, that will not leave a functioning society, but we need to streamline many of these processes.
Trains can work just fine in the US, and they do in fact operate profitably in several locations today.
I've seen dozens of methods at different companies, but I've only ever seen one that works and it works really well. Many of the top ISP's use a variant of it.
Let the network self document.
What does that mean? Well, typically it means some discipline in how descriptions are written. For instance ISP's will use a standard customer identifier on all ports. An enterprise might just use hostname. From there, tools like Rancid can poll router and switch configs, store them in a version control system, and mail out changes to the entire staff. Rancid is great to use, because it reduces the human work load down to entering a single line for each device (name and OS type), and making sure that the device accepts logins.
Now that all the configs are archived and you have the one true list of devices it's trivial to take that list of devices and feed it to other tools. One of the first might be NetDisco which probes the devices with SNMP and builds adjacency tables, tracks MAC addresses, and so on. From it's database you should be able to locate anything on the network in seconds.
Now that there is a complete picture of the network, it's time for a little scripting. Take the output of Rancid and/or Netdisco, and use it to for instance build an MRTG configuration file, or a list of things for Nagios to probe. It's fairly easy to take the NetDisco adjacencies and run them into a tool like GraphViz to produce a network diagram.
I know of at least two ISP's using this basic formula, and it works really well. Going to an internal web site they can bring up diagrams, usage graphs, MAC tables, IP information and all sorts of other things about any device in the network in seconds. Once devices are in the system it is 100% automated, turn on a new port and it is magically graphed, MAC tracked, and added to the diagrams. Turn it off, it magically goes away. Everything is in version control so old state can be reconstructed. The only human manual intervention is adding/removing one line to the Rancid config when a device is turned up or turned down. I have even seen folks automate that with Netdisco (but, I think that can be problematic, as it's almost circular).
Spreadsheets, Visio diagrams, and the like are always out of date. Someone will always make a change and forget to update it. Some places are only a little out of date, most places are downright wrong. Self documenting is achievable, and always 100% current.
I think we already have the perfect attack plane for this mission, the A-10. It can easily keep up, was designed to visually target, and would obliterate a boat like this in a few shells.
I always find the "sense of entitlement" posts on these threads interesting, because they are both spot on and misplaced at the same time.
If you work an hourly wage job you are being paid for the time you work. You don't get paid for time you're not working. It's entirely reasonable for your employer to say "no personal calls" or "no gmail" while they are paying you to work.
If you work a salaried job, the theory is that the employer is paying you to do a job. "Ship version 1.0 to the customer by next thursday." If you get that done in 20 hours, great. If you get it done in 60 hours, great. If going to meet with the customer gets the job done, do it. If working in your office gets the job done, do it. One of the tests of if a job is salaried or not is if the employee has a significant amount of self direction. For a properly salaried employee if playing your cable bill online means you an sit at your desk and bang out the customer task, or you can knock off early to go to the office and pay it and miss the deadline, and that it's reasonable for your employer to provide that resource than it is ok. Salaried executives get to call home from the corporate jet and move around their personal life so they can meet with a client, and no one dings them for the long distance phone call to their wife.
The problem, in the US, is that many people are misclassified. Most programmers are salaried, but should probably be hourly. If you're told where to be, when to be there, what to do, and how to do it, you're not a salaried professional, you're an hourly professional. Companies prefer to pay salaries because they don't have to pay overtime. Your job takes 50 hours this week there's no hit to the budget for the extra 10.
This also means we don't have enough information to answer the OP's question. Is the OP an hourly, entry level person at a call center paid hourly? If so, his employer is telling him exactly how to do his job, and any personal stuff is off limits 100% of the time. If the OP is a Vice President who is given tasks and deadlines and told to take care of them in the best way possible in their professional opinion, and in their professional opinion paying a bill online, reading some personal e-mail, or keeping up with tech trends by reading slashdot helps get the task done faster/cheaper/better they are generally given that latitude.
There are a number of TV's and Blue-Ray players that have Skype clients.
The Tely-HD is a stand alone solution that does the same thing.
It's easy to find wall mount units for a TV, I suggest using Monoprice.
Setting the grand parents up with one of these units so they can sit in their living room and use the TV, along with some sort of unit in the kids room is the way to go. The TV can always be easily repurposed later. If you already have a TV adding a Blue-Ray with the capability is a nice way to get Skype now and be able to play Disney movies for the kid later.