Email provider Fusemail (www.fusemail.com) already does this. Not that it's earth-shattering, but honestly I prefer email integrated RSS.
1. Faster to forward articles of interest 2. One interface to deal with reading text content 3. IMAP shows articles read / unread and supports flaggging, marking of messages
I'm sure I could do this with another program / web site. Why would I want to?
Keep in mind this individual has said he's already afraid of potential problems, so let's not assume that installing a unix server is going to be a piece of cake. It may, and it may not.
In addition, while squirrelmail may address the mail issue, it may not address the groupware functionality his users may require (calendaring, ldap address editing, tasks, group appointments). I've had offices as small as 5 people insist on having Exchange based on their "need" for groupware.
Really, there are certain costs with DIY vs. hosted. They are:
DIY
Always have access to mail, even if internet is down
Granular control over routing, message groups, etc.
Control over spam solutions
Hosted
Someone else does the backup
Access to some higher end features w/o the work
Groupware functionality w/o the work
Webmail already solved for you
I ran my own mail server for my various domains, and have set up mail servers for companies. currently I'm using Fusemail for my personal and consulting email, and I'm starting to think that I would recommend it for most small companies.
The reason behind this is, I don't have the time to do the administration myself. I have other work priorities, and messing around with a server all the time is not one of them. The other benefits are, network synchronization of calendar, IMAP, server side sorting, and eventually Outlook pluggability (good for PDA users).
You can do this stuff yourself, but it takes time and is not always reliable. The down side of picking an external provider is, when your internet goes down, email is down, even internally. That can hurt a company and your credibility.
With that said, I would look potentially at email service providers (not web hosting providers) for an external solution, and probably exchange for an internal solution with groupware, and other unix solutions for internal email without groupware.
What you need to decide is how much responsibility you want for being the point person on email. If you're already afraid of the result, better to hire a domain expert, and one that's been in business. Get a good SLA (service level agreement), and assure that your internet connection is either redundant or up most of the time.
Year 2K Bug - Programming results in 2byte date code, causing chaos when first two digits of year change. Mass blackouts predicted.
Outcome - Last gasp for COBOL programmers.
Year 2K5 Bug - Legislation results in 3 week time change, causing chaos in out of sync watches, cell phones and computers. Mass mis-scheduled meetings predicted.
Outcome - You cut out of work early to play softball in the park. Boss does not notice.
So, Google is sort of an interesting example of a company that has purposedly constructed its corporation for risk taking. How?
Throughout its life, google has been structured in a two tiered stockholding structure, Class A and B shares. One class (I think it's the A) gets to vote at board meetings, the second just gets dividends.
If you've ever worked at a startup, this is a pretty typical structure for startups. There are preferred shares, which your financers hold, and regular shares, which you as a founder/CTO/chief monkey get. What's unusual in Google's case is that its been able to not only fund itself, but go IPO, while maintaining a large percentage of founder control over the company.
If you read the IPO statements, they make a hell of a lot of statements about the inherent risk in buying google stock. Not only are you buying what the _founders_ classify as a risky investment, but you don't even get to vote on the direction of the company!
What this does though, is allow the founders to run the company in a very different structure from many other public companies. Essentially, they can take risks that at most companies, would not pass the muster of the boardroom.
Is Google overvalued? It depends on what you mean. It would be similar to asking, is it worth dropping 10K on the World Poker Championships buy-in. If you're confident enough in your ability to play poker (or be lucky), or confident enough in the ability of Google to outflank the competition in the tech world, you're set.
Otherwise, you're making a gamble. Personally, I like to gamble with odds I can control.
Yes. Exactly. Moore's law presupposed binary transistor based computing. That's like looking at 2 lane road and saying "This road will never be able to support more traffic!"
IGCC (integrated gas combined cycle) coal plants basically can be retrofitted to do this, at a lower cost than CH3, but the stable long-term options for carbon sequestration seem to be:
CaO +CO2 -> CaCO3, conversion to limestone using lime. Problem, most people get lime from baking limestone.
Capped oil well or deep aquifer storage in gaseous form.
liquid "bubbles" that are thermodynamically unstable, sink them to the bottom of the ocean or other.
The problem with all of these is you have to worry about the re-emergence of the CO2. Limestone seems like a good option because you just have to keep it dry. The downside is that limestone is heavy and even though the production is exothermic, producing lime has not been worked out. Pressurizing CO2 and storing it underground works, unless it leaks out. Then you have the same problem. Liquid bubbles are good if you have a very high pressure place to store them (the ocean), but the long term effect is acidification of the ocean and exhaustion of the carrying capacity (estimated to be around 1000-1500Gtons, we produce around 3Gtons/year).
There aren't any easy answers. However long term, since coal is about 57% of current electricity in the U.S., it's not going away. What carbon sequestration will do is allow us to bridge the gap economically and technologically between high and low carbon fuel sources.
I'm a big fan of wind, but there are still lots of hurdles.
I think the really interesting thing about this is that the web pages that are really successful in the new web (post bubble) are ones that are super stripped down and basic. Google and Craigslist two of the main sites I use. Blogs and blogging are big. Slashdot has basically the same design as ever, with the exception of the top banner ad. It seems that people didn't end up wanting lots of complexity in their web sites.
The printed word ends up (again) being the most important thing out there. It goes to show that you don't need heavy-duty graphics and don't want flashy ads if you're delivering on content.
A lot of people in their 20's are unhappy anyway, and I bet that if you look at IT pro's that are older, with families and in stable jobs, you'd find plenty of happy people.
You come out of school and the world treats you like you're a shit, made to do shit work. they resent you even more because you're clocking more dollars than most other people because you have the debugging / problem solving skills that demand a higher salary. still, you can't get no respect. that's enough to make anyone unhappy.
most people don't find their groove until they're in their 30's, when they really start figuring out what's important to their lives, start settling down and stop worrying about the general bullshit in life.
I'm an IT pro and definitely getting out. mostly because i feel like i've hit the limit of learning, and just am not interested in going deeper. I'm going back to school and getting into the energy business. there will be lots of problems to solve in the next 10 years, it's important for the world (and the U.S.), and there will also be money (yes, money is nice).
Also the IT industry has hit a plateau, as far as I'm concerned. a lot of the really cool revolutionary stuff has been done. I saw an ad for FFXI last night, and they were advertising a 40 GB HDD in the package. Who the fsck would know what that was 5 years ago? Just like that, IT has revolutionized the fabric of society. For me, it's time to move on.
Don't forget the extra $50,000 you gotta pay the driver for hazard pay, and the 2 HumVees and 6 soldiers that have to accompany the tank truck to stop guerillas from rocket launching the truck into oblivion.
(ok, even then it doesn't add up to $40/gallon. How can I become a Pentagon supplier?)
Like in the 70's oil crisis. Oil production peaked in the U.S., and naturally, the price increased in the U.S. Is that the natural law you mean? Vested interests seldom allow prices to follow natural curves if they can possibly control it.
unless gasoline gets a lot more expensive
Since nobody knows when oil will really start to run out, and there are, at best, just predictions, and since the cost of replacing / changing the current distribution system is really enormous and will take years, just allowing the market to "take care" of things is a recipe for disaster.
The real problem hear is not the rise in prices, it's the instability of prices. And that instability in energy prices are coming is a surety. This is for a couple of reasons. First, as supplies dwindle, the market will no longer be able to determine prices accurately because supply will become an unknown. Second, deteriorating political conditions in the Middle East (internal to Saudi Arabia) will make supplies unstable (you didn't think we invaded Iraq because of Iraqi oil, did ya? Silly conspiracy theorist!). Instability makes it nearly impossible for companies to properly determine the cost to charge for items.
For example, if you have a factory line, do you just turn it off for a week if electricity prices double that week? Do you stop paying your workers for that week? The ramifications of unstable energy prices surge through an economy, causing mass disruptions. What if it costs $4/widget to ship this week, and $2/widget next week? What if you need the widget to run your company this week?
The government is not here to steal our money, it's here to provide some aspect of stability from a world that does not encourage it. Businesses do not grow as well in instable climates, as it makes it more difficult for CEO's etc to make sensible business predictions.
By getting a leg up in providing more stable energy sources, ones that do not depend on Middle Eastern governments and dwindling resources, we make the U.S. better off in the long run.
Admins on sites exceeding 10 or so workstations may want to look into Windows SUS, Software Update Services (SUS) gives the capability of integrated patch management and centralized patch distribution. This is sort of along the lines of RHN with a centralized console for distributing through a domain.
Fished an 895cxi out of an unused room. Psych! Now I can print all my _work_ related documents in the privacy of my own room.
Grabbed a cartridge from the storage room, as the one that was in there seemed to be out.
Funny, it wasn't printing yellow. Ran some cleaning routines, still no luck.
Then grabbed another cartridge.
IT wasn't printing cyan.
Then another cartridge.
5 cartridges later, I got one that was printing all three colors correctly. Expiry date was Nov 2000.
I didn't get any error messages about expiration dates on the computer, but seriously, these printer cartridges were sealed. They shouldn't be malfunctioning right out of the box.
This Book, Materials Matter was recently published, convering not only the ideas of building with non-toxic, environmentally friendly materials, but also incorporating that ethos in a financially viable manner into all aspects of manufacturing.
Many of the current building materials may seem relatively inert to individuals without compromised immune systems, however many can be transformed into deadly materials quite simply.
For example, when vinyl siding burns, it releases a chemical so deadly that it is frequently responsible for the smoke inhalation deaths in building fires.
Many building materials cannot be disposed of safely and ecologically, like PVC pipe, and the long term effects of exposure to complex chemicals are just being studied.
We know how to produce safe materials, and we know how to produce environmentally sound materials. Why not start now?
Hubbard's peak. The impending energy crisis talks about how oil is running out much more quickly than people think. A good read backed up with some solid science. Makes you want to go buy a wind turbine today.
Spread the Cost (was: Moore's Law)
on
The Space Elevator
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
If the real and only cost barrier is carbon nanotubes, it seems like the best way to get this all to happen is to reduce the cost.
Okay, okay, you're saying, that's obvious. However we could look at another scenario to see how such things are possible:
Say we're sitting in 1983 or so, and we're saying, boy, it would be nice if all universities could have supercomputers and massive 10GB storage arrays to do computational exercises. Looking back 20 years, we know that's basically possible. The desktops of today were the supercomputers of yesterday.
So, let's figure out how to spread the cost. How can we incorporate carbon nanotubes into equipment that everyone needs/wants to use? Does it mean integrating it into automotive equipment? Consumer electronics? Clothing? What?
What would be the killer business/consumer application for carbon nanotubes?
If we assume that cost is a function of production size and research money, the best way to up both is to provide a market that's not pie-in-the-sky (forgive the pun). We can have cheap nanotubes in 10 years, but it seems that the best way to do that is to make nanotubes common everywhere, not by utilitizing the NASA budget (which is going to be under heavy scrutiny after the latest disaster).
Ok, I'm getting ready for the flames, but I can see perfectly well why this is a good product for corporations.
1. Gives security conscious corporations a reason to allow AIM rather than ban it (not so long ago, I seem to remember, the AIM client had a security hole. Wasn't that '99?)
2. Allows companies to unify their methods of IMing, a product which is actually a really good business tool. If you're on a conference call, phone call, in a meeting...there are lots of times it's great to have a live medium to communicate with a coworker. Easier than remembering Joe down at helpdesk is B1gP3n1s.
3. The CYAN (Cover your ass network). Hey, I know that you don't have to worry about this when you're down at the bar putting the moves on the blonde, but do that at work and it's all of a sudden the company's liability. Of course, you could lose your job. But they could lose money and time too. Don't forget, not every company out there is a big evil CORPORATION.
Those are three fine reasons. Hey, we don't open up the firewall and have mail delivered to a server on every desktop, why do the same with IM? It's a logical way to start partitioning off Instant Messaging, rather than having massive servers off somewhere else handling messages. And in a lot of cases, companies are leery about plaintext running around the web with potential trade secrets. It's silly, when it could route locally.
I'm not saying that AOL's solution is the one and only, but the idea is a good one. For the same reason we use mail servers, file servers, PBX systems, it makes sense. With companies convinced that IM is necessary for productivity, it opens the doors for other solutions, non proprietary in nature. And it opens the demands for secure features to be built into clients. Hey, somebody's gotta pay the bills, right? And we know that it won't be AOL people dialling up...
I gotta say, what a tedious article. Maybe I'm just getting older and don't engage in wild speculation as much any more, but it seemed like a load of cliches. A much more interesting article would have been an analysis of how people who actually have large amounts of money to spend decide to use it.
Isn't the age of irony over? How about engaging our leaders rather than marveling at their egos?
Slashdot Mirror
Email provider Fusemail (www.fusemail.com) already does this. Not that it's earth-shattering, but honestly I prefer email integrated RSS.
1. Faster to forward articles of interest
2. One interface to deal with reading text content
3. IMAP shows articles read / unread and supports flaggging, marking of messages
I'm sure I could do this with another program / web site. Why would I want to?
Keep in mind this individual has said he's already afraid of potential problems, so let's not assume that installing a unix server is going to be a piece of cake. It may, and it may not.
In addition, while squirrelmail may address the mail issue, it may not address the groupware functionality his users may require (calendaring, ldap address editing, tasks, group appointments). I've had offices as small as 5 people insist on having Exchange based on their "need" for groupware.
DIY
Hosted
I ran my own mail server for my various domains, and have set up mail servers for companies. currently I'm using Fusemail for my personal and consulting email, and I'm starting to think that I would recommend it for most small companies.
The reason behind this is, I don't have the time to do the administration myself. I have other work priorities, and messing around with a server all the time is not one of them. The other benefits are, network synchronization of calendar, IMAP, server side sorting, and eventually Outlook pluggability (good for PDA users).
You can do this stuff yourself, but it takes time and is not always reliable. The down side of picking an external provider is, when your internet goes down, email is down, even internally. That can hurt a company and your credibility.
With that said, I would look potentially at email service providers (not web hosting providers) for an external solution, and probably exchange for an internal solution with groupware, and other unix solutions for internal email without groupware.
What you need to decide is how much responsibility you want for being the point person on email. If you're already afraid of the result, better to hire a domain expert, and one that's been in business. Get a good SLA (service level agreement), and assure that your internet connection is either redundant or up most of the time.
Year 2K Bug - Programming results in 2byte date code, causing chaos when first two digits of year change. Mass blackouts predicted.
Outcome - Last gasp for COBOL programmers.
Year 2K5 Bug - Legislation results in 3 week time change, causing chaos in out of sync watches, cell phones and computers. Mass mis-scheduled meetings predicted.
Outcome - You cut out of work early to play softball in the park. Boss does not notice.
Throughout its life, google has been structured in a two tiered stockholding structure, Class A and B shares. One class (I think it's the A) gets to vote at board meetings, the second just gets dividends.
If you've ever worked at a startup, this is a pretty typical structure for startups. There are preferred shares, which your financers hold, and regular shares, which you as a founder/CTO/chief monkey get. What's unusual in Google's case is that its been able to not only fund itself, but go IPO, while maintaining a large percentage of founder control over the company.
If you read the IPO statements, they make a hell of a lot of statements about the inherent risk in buying google stock. Not only are you buying what the _founders_ classify as a risky investment, but you don't even get to vote on the direction of the company!
What this does though, is allow the founders to run the company in a very different structure from many other public companies. Essentially, they can take risks that at most companies, would not pass the muster of the boardroom.
Is Google overvalued? It depends on what you mean. It would be similar to asking, is it worth dropping 10K on the World Poker Championships buy-in. If you're confident enough in your ability to play poker (or be lucky), or confident enough in the ability of Google to outflank the competition in the tech world, you're set.
Otherwise, you're making a gamble. Personally, I like to gamble with odds I can control.
And then someone adds six lanes...
Now you don't have to go to the red light district to get a blow job...
Bu Shi operator?
How's that for a bad cross-language pun?
The problem with all of these is you have to worry about the re-emergence of the CO2. Limestone seems like a good option because you just have to keep it dry. The downside is that limestone is heavy and even though the production is exothermic, producing lime has not been worked out. Pressurizing CO2 and storing it underground works, unless it leaks out. Then you have the same problem. Liquid bubbles are good if you have a very high pressure place to store them (the ocean), but the long term effect is acidification of the ocean and exhaustion of the carrying capacity (estimated to be around 1000-1500Gtons, we produce around 3Gtons/year).
There aren't any easy answers. However long term, since coal is about 57% of current electricity in the U.S., it's not going away. What carbon sequestration will do is allow us to bridge the gap economically and technologically between high and low carbon fuel sources.
I'm a big fan of wind, but there are still lots of hurdles.
I think the really interesting thing about this is that the web pages that are really successful in the new web (post bubble) are ones that are super stripped down and basic. Google and Craigslist two of the main sites I use. Blogs and blogging are big. Slashdot has basically the same design as ever, with the exception of the top banner ad. It seems that people didn't end up wanting lots of complexity in their web sites.
The printed word ends up (again) being the most important thing out there. It goes to show that you don't need heavy-duty graphics and don't want flashy ads if you're delivering on content.
Win2k SP4
Hotfix KB837001
Hotfix KB835732
Hotfix KB828749
Hotfix KB828741
Hotfix KB828035
Hotfix KB329115
Hotfix KB823182
Hotfix KB823559
Hotfix KB824105
A lot of people in their 20's are unhappy anyway, and I bet that if you look at IT pro's that are older, with families and in stable jobs, you'd find plenty of happy people.
You come out of school and the world treats you like you're a shit, made to do shit work. they resent you even more because you're clocking more dollars than most other people because you have the debugging / problem solving skills that demand a higher salary. still, you can't get no respect. that's enough to make anyone unhappy.
most people don't find their groove until they're in their 30's, when they really start figuring out what's important to their lives, start settling down and stop worrying about the general bullshit in life.
I'm an IT pro and definitely getting out. mostly because i feel like i've hit the limit of learning, and just am not interested in going deeper. I'm going back to school and getting into the energy business. there will be lots of problems to solve in the next 10 years, it's important for the world (and the U.S.), and there will also be money (yes, money is nice).
Also the IT industry has hit a plateau, as far as I'm concerned. a lot of the really cool revolutionary stuff has been done. I saw an ad for FFXI last night, and they were advertising a 40 GB HDD in the package. Who the fsck would know what that was 5 years ago? Just like that, IT has revolutionized the fabric of society. For me, it's time to move on.
A better DDOS would be a smtp based attack. If you flooded your enemy's MXers it would hurt them more than taking out their web site.
Don't forget the extra $50,000 you gotta pay the driver for hazard pay, and the 2 HumVees and 6 soldiers that have to accompany the tank truck to stop guerillas from rocket launching the truck into oblivion.
(ok, even then it doesn't add up to $40/gallon. How can I become a Pentagon supplier?)
You know how hard it is to sell Dish TV off my home server when Comcast only gives me 30KB/sec upstream?
in accordance with the law of supply and demand
Like in the 70's oil crisis. Oil production peaked in the U.S., and naturally, the price increased in the U.S. Is that the natural law you mean? Vested interests seldom allow prices to follow natural curves if they can possibly control it.
unless gasoline gets a lot more expensive
Since nobody knows when oil will really start to run out, and there are, at best, just predictions, and since the cost of replacing / changing the current distribution system is really enormous and will take years, just allowing the market to "take care" of things is a recipe for disaster.
The real problem hear is not the rise in prices, it's the instability of prices. And that instability in energy prices are coming is a surety. This is for a couple of reasons. First, as supplies dwindle, the market will no longer be able to determine prices accurately because supply will become an unknown. Second, deteriorating political conditions in the Middle East (internal to Saudi Arabia) will make supplies unstable (you didn't think we invaded Iraq because of Iraqi oil, did ya? Silly conspiracy theorist!). Instability makes it nearly impossible for companies to properly determine the cost to charge for items.
For example, if you have a factory line, do you just turn it off for a week if electricity prices double that week? Do you stop paying your workers for that week? The ramifications of unstable energy prices surge through an economy, causing mass disruptions. What if it costs $4/widget to ship this week, and $2/widget next week? What if you need the widget to run your company this week?
The government is not here to steal our money, it's here to provide some aspect of stability from a world that does not encourage it. Businesses do not grow as well in instable climates, as it makes it more difficult for CEO's etc to make sensible business predictions.
By getting a leg up in providing more stable energy sources, ones that do not depend on Middle Eastern governments and dwindling resources, we make the U.S. better off in the long run.
Keep your eyes on the prize.
It's useful.
For Grand Theft Time-O...
all the broken cartridges were stored in a heat and humidity regulated computer room in a multi-pack box in a storage cabinet.
Grabbed a cartridge from the storage room, as the one that was in there seemed to be out.
Funny, it wasn't printing yellow. Ran some cleaning routines, still no luck.
Then grabbed another cartridge.
IT wasn't printing cyan.
Then another cartridge.
5 cartridges later, I got one that was printing all three colors correctly. Expiry date was Nov 2000.
I didn't get any error messages about expiration dates on the computer, but seriously, these printer cartridges were sealed. They shouldn't be malfunctioning right out of the box.
Many of the current building materials may seem relatively inert to individuals without compromised immune systems, however many can be transformed into deadly materials quite simply.
For example, when vinyl siding burns, it releases a chemical so deadly that it is frequently responsible for the smoke inhalation deaths in building fires.
Many building materials cannot be disposed of safely and ecologically, like PVC pipe, and the long term effects of exposure to complex chemicals are just being studied.
We know how to produce safe materials, and we know how to produce environmentally sound materials. Why not start now?
Hubbard's Peak on Amazon
Okay, okay, you're saying, that's obvious. However we could look at another scenario to see how such things are possible:
Say we're sitting in 1983 or so, and we're saying, boy, it would be nice if all universities could have supercomputers and massive 10GB storage arrays to do computational exercises. Looking back 20 years, we know that's basically possible. The desktops of today were the supercomputers of yesterday.
So, let's figure out how to spread the cost. How can we incorporate carbon nanotubes into equipment that everyone needs/wants to use? Does it mean integrating it into automotive equipment? Consumer electronics? Clothing? What?
What would be the killer business/consumer application for carbon nanotubes?
If we assume that cost is a function of production size and research money, the best way to up both is to provide a market that's not pie-in-the-sky (forgive the pun). We can have cheap nanotubes in 10 years, but it seems that the best way to do that is to make nanotubes common everywhere, not by utilitizing the NASA budget (which is going to be under heavy scrutiny after the latest disaster).
1. Gives security conscious corporations a reason to allow AIM rather than ban it (not so long ago, I seem to remember, the AIM client had a security hole. Wasn't that '99?)
2. Allows companies to unify their methods of IMing, a product which is actually a really good business tool. If you're on a conference call, phone call, in a meeting...there are lots of times it's great to have a live medium to communicate with a coworker. Easier than remembering Joe down at helpdesk is B1gP3n1s.
3. The CYAN (Cover your ass network). Hey, I know that you don't have to worry about this when you're down at the bar putting the moves on the blonde, but do that at work and it's all of a sudden the company's liability. Of course, you could lose your job. But they could lose money and time too. Don't forget, not every company out there is a big evil CORPORATION.
Those are three fine reasons. Hey, we don't open up the firewall and have mail delivered to a server on every desktop, why do the same with IM? It's a logical way to start partitioning off Instant Messaging, rather than having massive servers off somewhere else handling messages. And in a lot of cases, companies are leery about plaintext running around the web with potential trade secrets. It's silly, when it could route locally.
I'm not saying that AOL's solution is the one and only, but the idea is a good one. For the same reason we use mail servers, file servers, PBX systems, it makes sense. With companies convinced that IM is necessary for productivity, it opens the doors for other solutions, non proprietary in nature. And it opens the demands for secure features to be built into clients. Hey, somebody's gotta pay the bills, right? And we know that it won't be AOL people dialling up...
Isn't the age of irony over? How about engaging our leaders rather than marveling at their egos?