For me, the amount of time required to check back through and move over 10,000 or 20,000 documents "per generation" just isn't reasonable. I move forward email from platform to platform - but that's about it. I figure one device per "8-10"years put away means I shouldn't really have more than 8-10 devices I need to archive throughout my lifespan. I rarely ever fire up or use the devices - I started up the XT about 6 years ago and copied off it 500 or so things I wanted (it had an old 10 base 2 network card in it - I still had an old 10base2 - 10baseT repeater around) - I loaded a packet driver and used an old DOS based FTP to move the things off to my current server. I may fire it up again someday - I may never. It doesn't take up too much room in the office closet.
I find that format shift isn't too bad - my documents that were on my XT from the mid/late 80s were Word Perfect, GIF's, Lotus 123, and a few other applications, which opened just fine in modern apps. I know everything on my "90s" era computer would open fine on any modern application. Again, "Commodore 64" era documents are likely the only thing that I couldn't easily work with now - of those I really only have maybe 200... and I doubt I'll ever actually *really* need anything 25-30 years old.
There really is a simple way around this - and it is what I've done - I've got data 25 years old and it's still relatively easily manipulated with a little work. I've found floppy disks are relatively resilient, and old hard drives seem to keep their data for a long time. I've got a computer, display, keyboard, and associated peripherals stored for every generation of data that I kept: 1.I have a Commodore 64 with floppy drive and cassette drive stored in a box with the floppy disks and cassettes from that generation (late 70s/early 80s). 2.I have an IBM PC/XT with keyboard, a 5 1/4" floppy, 3 1/2" floppy, internal 20MB hard drive, and CGA monitor stored in a box with a load of 5 1/4" floppies filled with data from that generation (Mid 80s). 3.I have an IBM RS/6000 with display, keyboard, and mouse and internal 500MB hard drive loaded with all my docs and projects from that generation (early 90s). 4.I have a Pentium 2/300 PC * 15" monitor with windows 98, CD R/W drive, 3 1/2" floppy drive, and USB ports - and a crapload of CD's and 3 1/2" floppies full of stuff from that generation (Mid/late 90s).
When the current generation looks like it's going to be moving on, I'll put away a Core 2 Duo system with 1 TB of hard drive full of stuff with the different OS's I used loaded on it with boot manager (Ubuntu, XP, FreeBSD), a crapload of USB keys full of documents, along with burned DVDs etc. That'll take care of the "'00" generation.
The answer lies in not only archiving your data "of the generation" but the essential equipment needed to access it. I may have a heck of a time moving data off of my Commodore 64 - but I can at least see it and access it - I believe I stored a modem with it - so at worse I could set up a terminal server that it could dial into and dump data to. All the other systems I'm pretty sure I could recover stuff from - even if the PC/XT does have an MFM hard drive, etc.
And why not intercept all calls by setting up a prison-wide base-station? Use the ECHELON system or something to take care of the intercepted calls.
You know this is an idea I could really get behind - microcell equipment for office buildings, etc. has reached quite an affordable level and wouldn't really be more than a drop in the bucket when it comes to a prison budget. This way guards, staff, and visitors could still use their cell phones -- perhaps when you arrive at the prison check-in desk you give them your cell's ESN - they enable it for 8 or 12 hours through their microcell - you can make all the calls you want, etc. If you slip the phone to a prisoner or whatever, they are cutoff within the day and the phone is useless. Obviously all phone numbers "from and to" will be recorded - and you can be informed as such when you give them your ESN to get service within the prison.
Even easier - don't give them easy access to power outlets. Seriously.. they are in prison - do they really need a 120v outlet in their prison cell so they can charge their mobile phone?
For the record, I live in the same town ad the bus company that brought this all to a head (trentway-wager).
They had a point in their initial concern, however the way the transportation board handled this was all wrong. There were van operators who were unlicenced and unregulated, who basically bought large 10-15 person vans, and were advertising on PickupPal for "intercity transportation" (e.g. rides to Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, etc.). They were abusing PickupPal to basically operate a Van and Taxi service. Unfortunately, instead of the transportation board finding out who those unlicenced operators were and cracking down and fining them, they decided to take their wrath out on the website and screw it up for everyone else who were following the "spirit" of the website.
So really - even if you're bringing back 2GB or 4GB of data - almost all of today's laptops have SD memory card slots, and an SDHC 8gb chip costs less than lunch at most restaurants. Why not take all the pictures while you travel and when the trip is over put them all on the SDHC card and stick said card in your wallet. I've yet to see many wallets extensively searched at customs.
My old manager at my last place of employment was just like this "throw it in the dumpster" - surplus was all to go in the dumpster that was designated for hazardous/electronic waste and go to the scrap yard and be chopped up. Hundreds of monitors, CPU's, Cisco routers, hubs and switches, thousands upon thousands of feet of Cat5 cable, you name it.
However, said manager also told us all "the lid on the dumpster isn't locked and what happens to its contents when I'm gone home is out of my control" *hint hint* - so most of the IT staff, myself included, were pretty careful in stacking things in the dumpster all nice and neat and organized into "waste" and "not waste" - then we'd pick through it after hours for our own take. The next morning we would generally let it slip to the rest of the staff "there's leftover goodies in the dumpster - check it after work tonight".
I'm sure in the end we saved the company many 10's of thousands of $ in disposal fees as I believe we paid close to $0.50/pound for electronics disposal. ($20 for one CRT monitor)
Well.. I think we've just found a hole in services that needs filling.
Anyone want to start a "International travel with electronics subject to seizure" insurance company? "For just $50 we'll cover your data devices against loss or forfeiture due to seizure by government officials." Figuring something like only 1 in 100 or more gets seized - but every person now traveling cross-border would be concerned and willing to put out the money - it's a need that now needs to be met and a good profit could still be made. Policies could have additional coverages and options, such as providing rental or loaner equipment for up to so many days after seizure before considering a total loss, etc.
Anyone? Anyone? You've got a first customer right here.
Well.. we've been electing organized crime rings to office for the last who knows how many years and they aren't promising to pay off the national debt... So... why not pick one that will?!??!
12 million watt-hours per year is not THAT much electricity per person per year when you consider that includes all the electricity the town uses - for service industry, workplaces, and homes. That 12 million watt hours is 12,000 kilowatt hours per year - approximately 1000 kilowatt hours per month - around 33 kilowatt hours per day - approximately 1.5kilowatt hours per hour - or a "ongoing continuous consumption" of around 1500 watts per person. If you have an electric water heater, electric refrigerator, one computer, some CFL and LED lighting, a TV that's on a few hours a day, an electric stove, and an electric clothes dryer in your house, as well as a computer and lighting at your work place, add in some street lights, parking lot lighting, etc. that seems to be a very reasonable number.
In this case it's preferable to move your house to an "all electric" footprint as well - as any electricity you use has 0 carbon footprint. There's no benefit to using propane or natural gas for any of your household needs - heating should be 100% electric as well - any sort of furnace will have a CO2 footprint - where electric will not. Now, the 1500 watts of continuous consumption per person seems very reasonable. Get all these people to drive plug-in hybrid cars for their daily commute and their demand may go up a bit more again - but the carbon footprint of the town would virtually disappear. Very good progress in my opinion.
The wonderful thing is we don't even need to have ships off the coast to do this - or have we all forgotten where Guantanamo Bay is? A couple of good high-power directional antennae on the roof of the gitmo base pointed at the population centres of Cuba, and have all the tourists from Canada hand out thumb drives as gratuities to their Cuban service people while there on holidays. You've got a country full of people using Internet - and of course since it's through Gitmo - they could add in all the "pro-US" content they want while they are at it!
Actually it was set to be shut down for exactly a week and to be brought back online. Unfortunately when it was brought offline and the inspection began, it was found that backup pumps for the cooling system, which Chalk River had believed to be optional from documentation they had, were found to be non-existent. At that point the safety commission told them they couldn't restart the reactors until all that work was completed and the backup systems were tested and online. THAT process takes much more than a week - it was estimated it could take until the end of January to engineer all the production changes, obtain all the items needed, and implement the changes.
Considering the reactor that produces these radio isotopes is extremely critical to nuclear medicine around the globe, the government felt that delay was unacceptable and the extremely minor risk (as the reactor has operated many years just as it is without any incidents) was acceptable -- thus they said "Damn the backup pumps! Run the reactors! (just for 180 days)" -- in my opinion - the right choice. In the ensuing 180 days the engineering work can be completed, the pump systems can be obtained, and the reactors can be prepared for another week-long shutdown during which "short-time stockpiled isotopes" can be used (remember, even if it reaches its half-life, it's still working - and even after another half life it's still working - just need 4 times as much material to get the same amount of decay).
I don't understand how email can effectively "CYA" - every time I have tried to use email to justify something the other party said "and you know how easily email can be faked don't you?". Email is still not nearly as effective at CYA as a voicemail stored in your saved voicemails box. Much harder to fake the voice of your opposition.
This is very true - considering school districts typically pay publishers between $80-$100 per student text book - and usually get about 3 years of use per text before they are so damaged they need to be replaced - that is somewhere in the $25-$30/student/year/book range. If over the course of the student having this computer they are exposed to content from just 5 or 6 text books, without the purchase of those text books, the device has pretty much paid for itself in just that way alone. Add in the extra activities, access to Internet resources (think Project Gutenberg), classroom teaching, and familiarity with computing devices at an early age - and this is a clear win for the student and the school district. Classroom Lab computers are often abused, broken, not working properly, or otherwise fouled - in large part because the students don't have any responsibility toward the device as they will toward their "personal laptop" - and as well, these devices are sturdy, well built, and designed for the wear and tear even a third world child in rough conditions may put on them.
This is a seemingly valid analogy in many ways - however I'm going to take a wild guess that the vast majority of people who "tap into" someone else's open Wi-Fi connection already have a DSL/Cable/etc connection at home and are paying for it. They are using the open WiFi connection due to extenuating circumstances. It would be more akin to saying you have a house with a water connection, unlimited usage per month. Your neighbour 4 km away (you live out in the sticks...) also has the same connection and unlimited water service. You both have a faucet on a pole along the road in front of your house. No sign. Just a faucet at a convenient height hooked to your water service. You're out for a walk and get thirsty as you go by their house. You fill up your water bottle from their faucet without asking. Sometimes they might fill theirs up walking by your house - sometimes someone from 1000's of km's away does the same when they pass by. Should the water utility company be angry? Should either of you with the faucets be angry at anyone? Should any party consider any laws to have been broken? Personally, I don't think so.
I'll admit readily to having used open WiFi points when away from "home base". I used one sitting in a parking lot of a local university waiting to pick my wife up from a class she was taking. I used one sitting in a cheapo-motel while on the road (they didn't have their own but a neighbour apparently did). I used one parked in a public parking lot while waiting for someone to get dropped off. Sure I could have a data card to the mobile network and pay one of the TelCo's a hefty fee by the MB for data - but for the 2 or 3 times a year I check my email and a few websites from open WiFi points is it worth it.. hardly.
In return I have an old 802.11b wireless access point pinned down to "2mbit" speed stuck in the attic, hooked to a high gain antenna, and wired through a Cisco PIX firewall's "DMZ" port connected to my DSL router here at home. My open A/P's default SSID is "default" - I hope that some day it's of some use to someone in or passing through my neighbourhood who needs WiFi access - just as theirs has been of use to me. I would refuse to testify to assist in prosecuting someone who was supposedly "caught" using it if they happen to make it illegal here.
I look at it this way - Novell doesn't want their money. They never did. They want to bleed SCOX so dry that they disappear - and any and all "unix" business disappears. Why? Well why leave another competitor to SUSE/SLED floating around out there. Novell is pretty much banking a good chunk of their future business success on Linux both in the datacenter and the desktop. Who would be good prospective customers for this? All the old SCOX customers who are still stuck with those products.
I would say it's in Novell's future interest to not let this sale go through, "reclaim" any UNIX business, and let SCOX dry up and disappear trying to pay its dues to Novell, IBM, Red Hat, and anyone else out there who has a stake to claim. Then SCO is gone, and there is no longer ANY existing "Unix on X86" vendors out there. (Ok - SUN has Solaris 10 on X86 - but we all know how that's going - and Solaris isn't "exactly" UNIX anyway). The potential loss of "up to $36MM" (that they never had in the first place really) from all those SCOX deals is more than worth it to see SCOX disappear completely from the face of the map. I'm sure IBM is only keeping their counterclaim option open simply to make sure that the dead decaying corpse of SCOX can be stamped out completely if it still had some sort of life left to it after Novell was done. If Novell were to let this deal go through, sure they would have their chance at their "30 some odd million in cash" - but then the little bits and pieces of the existing "SCOX UNIX business" move further away from the heel of their boot - and will be that much harder to stamp out.
This is precisely why there is "tivoization" - your device does not stand alone in the world. If you take a Tivo home, take it apart, reverse engineer it, and run AmigaOS on it - NO ONE will care - as long as you keep those changes to yourself and you don't hook the device to any network or content distribution stream. The fact that the device isn't supposed to be used in a "stand-alone" environment is precisely what drives companies to this sort of behavior. The device is meant to be connected to the rest of the world - through network, through airwaves, through cable tv and satellite signals. You can argue that "once those signals are in your house you can do whatever you want with them too" - that's a fine moral argument - but legally - it has been determined that those streams of data and their content do not belong to you, and if you want to decode them and use them, you have to follow the rules that they come with. If you don't like those rules - work to have them changed.
"Hacking the Tivo" changes the way you work with those data streams and thus bends or breaks the rules of the owners of those streams. To keep the owners of those data streams happy, the Tivo can't be designed to "easily circumvent" those original rules. If it could it would then be considered a tool in violation of the DMCA and other laws (I don't agree with most of those laws but they exist and that's another argument). If the "tivoization" of the device didn't happen, the content distributors would decide it doesn't play nice and put them out of business - most likely by not allowing them access to the content, or perhaps through legal means.
This work-around lets them have a "black box" that has some hidden operations in software, rather than hardware - thus making it easier to update and upgrade them - while still following the letter of the GPLv3 - the FOSS software on the device truly remains FOSS - you can do anything you want with it - and it won't interfere with the part of the box that makes it follow the rules. The device remains legal when it deals with the outside world and those outside streams - that don't belong to you - and you can change the interface or behavior of the part of the system that the FOSS software does operate.
Tivo has to write its own software to do the "black box" portion - no different than if it were hardware based on chips on the device - if they used GPL software in the black box portion - then we would have something to complain about if they don't release that to the public. As it is, they are doing what they have to to remain within the good graces of the providers of the data that the box is supposed to deal with - for if they don't - there will be no Tivo.
Probably about the same time as I bought my first hard drive to build my first "home grown" PC - 1995 or thereabouts - before that I never purchased a hard drive as my PC's came "all put together" from other family memebers who had their geek credits long before I did. The system I built that fine spring weekend in 1995 had a 800MB hard drive that I paid the beautiful price of $389 for - the CPU was a 486 dx2 66Mhz that ran me somewhere around $179 including mobo, it had a 4x CD-ROM drive, and 8MB of glorious RAM.
My current desktop PC build (put together 18 mos ago) has 2GB of RAM that ran me somewhere around $130. So - roughly 3 times as much RAM as that first PC had in hard drive space - for roughly 1/3 the price.
As for the solid state hard drives for PC's - especially laptops - there's no reason the drive couldn't include a small NiMH battery, and somewhere around 1GB of standard RAM as part of its controller circuitry - along with its 60, 100, 120, 180, or however many GB of flash RAM storage. It might add $30 or $40 to the price - but it would make for an amazing drive with no worries about write cycles - that RAM could be used as an intelligent write cache for the drive - with the micro-capacity battery included just enough to keep the controller and RAM working for as long as it takes to write that 1GB of cache back to storage. If you figure those writes could be made in 10 seconds, a battery with 4 or 5 minutes of capacity would be plenty. The controller architecture could be smart enough to only write "aged data" from the on-board cache chip. If your drive is "thrashing" due to swap file or whatever - those writes would all be taking place in RAM and the read-backs would come out of there rather than from the flash - only once the blocks of RAM aged a certain amount would they then be written back to the flash RAM on the drive. It could be a "percent time" or a "fixed time" setup - say for example every 500ms the RAM is "aged" and a check is made to see which blocks are the oldest - at that point the oldest 5% of used cache RAM blocks get written back into storage and the cache is "free". If there's no writes at all to the disk, in 10 seconds everything is back on flash and the RAM cache is free. If you have a program swapping in and out constantly because you're too cheap to buy enough system RAM, it's actually swapping to RAM on the drive - slightly slower than memory on your FSB, so there's a small performance hit, but much faster than if it were writing back and forth to Flash, and little to no wear on your flash takes place. If the laptop goes to sleep/standby/hibernation/dead battery/power loss - the small battery in the controller maintains the drive long enough to finish all the writes back. There's other details to be worked out - how to handle writes bigger than the RAM chip on board the controller (pass-through to the drive flash, etc) - but that's for the hardware engineers to figure out - I can't do all their work for them. It's the idea of a large enough RAM cache on board a flash drive to eliminate writing "often written data" that is what should happen here.
And to think - there's almost as much L2 Cache on my CPU now as there was hard drive space my first "IBM PC" computer I ever used (not built) had (4MB of on die L2 cache now, VS a 5MB Corvus drive in my 8088 - circa 1983).
I have faith we will see storage drives with Petabyte capacities around 2020 - from 1983 to 1996 (13yrs) went from 5MB to 5GB - I'm pretty sure by 2009 we'll see 5TB drives as we are already seeing 1TB drives in 2007. 13 years should see us at 1000x today's capacity - 1 petabyte - and we'll be talking about using terabyte flash and having 2 terabytes of RAM in our PC. Hmmm... Microsoft better really add some bloat to the next version of its OS to drive that demand!!!!!!!!!! That's even more than Vista with a service pack will use!
Ok enough going on topic and off topic. I'm all for solid state drives. Less power consumption. Faster access. Quiet. Cool. Extremely impact sho
Once SCO becomes officially bankrupt, and the amount of money they owe their debtors and others as determined by the courts is caluclated, the bankruptcy judge is going to order them to sell off any and all assets they do have - to start paying those debtors in some predetermined order. One of the only positive assets SCO has now are those support contracts for "historical and current use of OpenServer, etc." - they actually bring some money to the SCO table each month and have helped keep them alive during this never-ending zoo.
That means the bankruptcy judge will force them to find a suitable buyer for those support contracts and sell them off ASAP - from their financials it looks like their total sales revenue over the last several quarters hovered somewhere around $6MM - and of that it looks like about $1.2MM was for services - about 20% - they could probably find a buyer willing to pay in the range of $5MM (or more) for that portion of the business were it to come unencumbered with any of SCO's liabilities (as a judge would so order). It's probably one of the only profitable aspects there is to be sold off other than some furniture.
So no, SCO's actual "customers" who were stuck with their products for whatever reason (or, please help them, they LIKE their products) will most likely find their support coming from someone new who purchases that facet of the business at the bankruptcy "fire sale". Who will it be? Got me! If I knew that I'd be an investment analyst and not an IT geek.
Slashdot Mirror
I thought it was the biggest inter-dimensional cross rip of its time?
For me, the amount of time required to check back through and move over 10,000 or 20,000 documents "per generation" just isn't reasonable. I move forward email from platform to platform - but that's about it. I figure one device per "8-10"years put away means I shouldn't really have more than 8-10 devices I need to archive throughout my lifespan. I rarely ever fire up or use the devices - I started up the XT about 6 years ago and copied off it 500 or so things I wanted (it had an old 10 base 2 network card in it - I still had an old 10base2 - 10baseT repeater around) - I loaded a packet driver and used an old DOS based FTP to move the things off to my current server. I may fire it up again someday - I may never. It doesn't take up too much room in the office closet.
I find that format shift isn't too bad - my documents that were on my XT from the mid/late 80s were Word Perfect, GIF's, Lotus 123, and a few other applications, which opened just fine in modern apps. I know everything on my "90s" era computer would open fine on any modern application. Again, "Commodore 64" era documents are likely the only thing that I couldn't easily work with now - of those I really only have maybe 200... and I doubt I'll ever actually *really* need anything 25-30 years old.
There really is a simple way around this - and it is what I've done - I've got data 25 years old and it's still relatively easily manipulated with a little work. I've found floppy disks are relatively resilient, and old hard drives seem to keep their data for a long time. I've got a computer, display, keyboard, and associated peripherals stored for every generation of data that I kept:
1.I have a Commodore 64 with floppy drive and cassette drive stored in a box with the floppy disks and cassettes from that generation (late 70s/early 80s).
2.I have an IBM PC/XT with keyboard, a 5 1/4" floppy, 3 1/2" floppy, internal 20MB hard drive, and CGA monitor stored in a box with a load of 5 1/4" floppies filled with data from that generation (Mid 80s).
3.I have an IBM RS/6000 with display, keyboard, and mouse and internal 500MB hard drive loaded with all my docs and projects from that generation (early 90s).
4.I have a Pentium 2/300 PC * 15" monitor with windows 98, CD R/W drive, 3 1/2" floppy drive, and USB ports - and a crapload of CD's and 3 1/2" floppies full of stuff from that generation (Mid/late 90s).
When the current generation looks like it's going to be moving on, I'll put away a Core 2 Duo system with 1 TB of hard drive full of stuff with the different OS's I used loaded on it with boot manager (Ubuntu, XP, FreeBSD), a crapload of USB keys full of documents, along with burned DVDs etc. That'll take care of the "'00" generation.
The answer lies in not only archiving your data "of the generation" but the essential equipment needed to access it. I may have a heck of a time moving data off of my Commodore 64 - but I can at least see it and access it - I believe I stored a modem with it - so at worse I could set up a terminal server that it could dial into and dump data to. All the other systems I'm pretty sure I could recover stuff from - even if the PC/XT does have an MFM hard drive, etc.
And why not intercept all calls by setting up a prison-wide base-station? Use the ECHELON system or something to take care of the intercepted calls.
You know this is an idea I could really get behind - microcell equipment for office buildings, etc. has reached quite an affordable level and wouldn't really be more than a drop in the bucket when it comes to a prison budget. This way guards, staff, and visitors could still use their cell phones -- perhaps when you arrive at the prison check-in desk you give them your cell's ESN - they enable it for 8 or 12 hours through their microcell - you can make all the calls you want, etc. If you slip the phone to a prisoner or whatever, they are cutoff within the day and the phone is useless. Obviously all phone numbers "from and to" will be recorded - and you can be informed as such when you give them your ESN to get service within the prison.
Even easier - don't give them easy access to power outlets. Seriously.. they are in prison - do they really need a 120v outlet in their prison cell so they can charge their mobile phone?
For the record, I live in the same town ad the bus company that brought this all to a head (trentway-wager).
They had a point in their initial concern, however the way the transportation board handled this was all wrong. There were van operators who were unlicenced and unregulated, who basically bought large 10-15 person vans, and were advertising on PickupPal for "intercity transportation" (e.g. rides to Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, etc.). They were abusing PickupPal to basically operate a Van and Taxi service. Unfortunately, instead of the transportation board finding out who those unlicenced operators were and cracking down and fining them, they decided to take their wrath out on the website and screw it up for everyone else who were following the "spirit" of the website.
So really - even if you're bringing back 2GB or 4GB of data - almost all of today's laptops have SD memory card slots, and an SDHC 8gb chip costs less than lunch at most restaurants. Why not take all the pictures while you travel and when the trip is over put them all on the SDHC card and stick said card in your wallet. I've yet to see many wallets extensively searched at customs.
If we grind up spammers and sell them, will Hormel sue us for selling a processed meat product called "Spammer"?
My old manager at my last place of employment was just like this "throw it in the dumpster" - surplus was all to go in the dumpster that was designated for hazardous/electronic waste and go to the scrap yard and be chopped up. Hundreds of monitors, CPU's, Cisco routers, hubs and switches, thousands upon thousands of feet of Cat5 cable, you name it.
However, said manager also told us all "the lid on the dumpster isn't locked and what happens to its contents when I'm gone home is out of my control" *hint hint* - so most of the IT staff, myself included, were pretty careful in stacking things in the dumpster all nice and neat and organized into "waste" and "not waste" - then we'd pick through it after hours for our own take. The next morning we would generally let it slip to the rest of the staff "there's leftover goodies in the dumpster - check it after work tonight".
I'm sure in the end we saved the company many 10's of thousands of $ in disposal fees as I believe we paid close to $0.50/pound for electronics disposal. ($20 for one CRT monitor)
Anyone want to start a "International travel with electronics subject to seizure" insurance company? "For just $50 we'll cover your data devices against loss or forfeiture due to seizure by government officials." Figuring something like only 1 in 100 or more gets seized - but every person now traveling cross-border would be concerned and willing to put out the money - it's a need that now needs to be met and a good profit could still be made. Policies could have additional coverages and options, such as providing rental or loaner equipment for up to so many days after seizure before considering a total loss, etc.
Anyone? Anyone? You've got a first customer right here.
Well.. we've been electing organized crime rings to office for the last who knows how many years and they aren't promising to pay off the national debt... So... why not pick one that will?!??!
12 million watt-hours per year is not THAT much electricity per person per year when you consider that includes all the electricity the town uses - for service industry, workplaces, and homes. That 12 million watt hours is 12,000 kilowatt hours per year - approximately 1000 kilowatt hours per month - around 33 kilowatt hours per day - approximately 1.5kilowatt hours per hour - or a "ongoing continuous consumption" of around 1500 watts per person. If you have an electric water heater, electric refrigerator, one computer, some CFL and LED lighting, a TV that's on a few hours a day, an electric stove, and an electric clothes dryer in your house, as well as a computer and lighting at your work place, add in some street lights, parking lot lighting, etc. that seems to be a very reasonable number.
In this case it's preferable to move your house to an "all electric" footprint as well - as any electricity you use has 0 carbon footprint. There's no benefit to using propane or natural gas for any of your household needs - heating should be 100% electric as well - any sort of furnace will have a CO2 footprint - where electric will not. Now, the 1500 watts of continuous consumption per person seems very reasonable. Get all these people to drive plug-in hybrid cars for their daily commute and their demand may go up a bit more again - but the carbon footprint of the town would virtually disappear. Very good progress in my opinion.
They do when you post photos of the perpetrator in the act of the crime all over town with a "reward" offer affixed.
The wonderful thing is we don't even need to have ships off the coast to do this - or have we all forgotten where Guantanamo Bay is? A couple of good high-power directional antennae on the roof of the gitmo base pointed at the population centres of Cuba, and have all the tourists from Canada hand out thumb drives as gratuities to their Cuban service people while there on holidays. You've got a country full of people using Internet - and of course since it's through Gitmo - they could add in all the "pro-US" content they want while they are at it!
It's "Eh" you insensitive anonymous coward!
I purchased one here for list price no problem last week - they have them in stock all the time.
http://www.canadacomputers.com/index.php?do=ShowProduct&cmd=pd&pid=016825&cid=896
You can find them available in store as well. They have 4 just in this colour in stock in my local store.
Actually it was set to be shut down for exactly a week and to be brought back online. Unfortunately when it was brought offline and the inspection began, it was found that backup pumps for the cooling system, which Chalk River had believed to be optional from documentation they had, were found to be non-existent. At that point the safety commission told them they couldn't restart the reactors until all that work was completed and the backup systems were tested and online. THAT process takes much more than a week - it was estimated it could take until the end of January to engineer all the production changes, obtain all the items needed, and implement the changes.
Considering the reactor that produces these radio isotopes is extremely critical to nuclear medicine around the globe, the government felt that delay was unacceptable and the extremely minor risk (as the reactor has operated many years just as it is without any incidents) was acceptable -- thus they said "Damn the backup pumps! Run the reactors! (just for 180 days)" -- in my opinion - the right choice. In the ensuing 180 days the engineering work can be completed, the pump systems can be obtained, and the reactors can be prepared for another week-long shutdown during which "short-time stockpiled isotopes" can be used (remember, even if it reaches its half-life, it's still working - and even after another half life it's still working - just need 4 times as much material to get the same amount of decay).
I think you have that backwards - Should Apple (M.Cap - 170.12 Billion) buy Disney (M. Cap 62.42 Billion).
I don't understand how email can effectively "CYA" - every time I have tried to use email to justify something the other party said "and you know how easily email can be faked don't you?". Email is still not nearly as effective at CYA as a voicemail stored in your saved voicemails box. Much harder to fake the voice of your opposition.
This is very true - considering school districts typically pay publishers between $80-$100 per student text book - and usually get about 3 years of use per text before they are so damaged they need to be replaced - that is somewhere in the $25-$30/student/year/book range. If over the course of the student having this computer they are exposed to content from just 5 or 6 text books, without the purchase of those text books, the device has pretty much paid for itself in just that way alone. Add in the extra activities, access to Internet resources (think Project Gutenberg), classroom teaching, and familiarity with computing devices at an early age - and this is a clear win for the student and the school district. Classroom Lab computers are often abused, broken, not working properly, or otherwise fouled - in large part because the students don't have any responsibility toward the device as they will toward their "personal laptop" - and as well, these devices are sturdy, well built, and designed for the wear and tear even a third world child in rough conditions may put on them.
This is a seemingly valid analogy in many ways - however I'm going to take a wild guess that the vast majority of people who "tap into" someone else's open Wi-Fi connection already have a DSL/Cable/etc connection at home and are paying for it. They are using the open WiFi connection due to extenuating circumstances. It would be more akin to saying you have a house with a water connection, unlimited usage per month. Your neighbour 4 km away (you live out in the sticks...) also has the same connection and unlimited water service. You both have a faucet on a pole along the road in front of your house. No sign. Just a faucet at a convenient height hooked to your water service. You're out for a walk and get thirsty as you go by their house. You fill up your water bottle from their faucet without asking. Sometimes they might fill theirs up walking by your house - sometimes someone from 1000's of km's away does the same when they pass by. Should the water utility company be angry? Should either of you with the faucets be angry at anyone? Should any party consider any laws to have been broken? Personally, I don't think so.
I'll admit readily to having used open WiFi points when away from "home base". I used one sitting in a parking lot of a local university waiting to pick my wife up from a class she was taking. I used one sitting in a cheapo-motel while on the road (they didn't have their own but a neighbour apparently did). I used one parked in a public parking lot while waiting for someone to get dropped off. Sure I could have a data card to the mobile network and pay one of the TelCo's a hefty fee by the MB for data - but for the 2 or 3 times a year I check my email and a few websites from open WiFi points is it worth it.. hardly.
In return I have an old 802.11b wireless access point pinned down to "2mbit" speed stuck in the attic, hooked to a high gain antenna, and wired through a Cisco PIX firewall's "DMZ" port connected to my DSL router here at home. My open A/P's default SSID is "default" - I hope that some day it's of some use to someone in or passing through my neighbourhood who needs WiFi access - just as theirs has been of use to me. I would refuse to testify to assist in prosecuting someone who was supposedly "caught" using it if they happen to make it illegal here.
I look at it this way - Novell doesn't want their money. They never did. They want to bleed SCOX so dry that they disappear - and any and all "unix" business disappears. Why? Well why leave another competitor to SUSE/SLED floating around out there. Novell is pretty much banking a good chunk of their future business success on Linux both in the datacenter and the desktop. Who would be good prospective customers for this? All the old SCOX customers who are still stuck with those products.
I would say it's in Novell's future interest to not let this sale go through, "reclaim" any UNIX business, and let SCOX dry up and disappear trying to pay its dues to Novell, IBM, Red Hat, and anyone else out there who has a stake to claim. Then SCO is gone, and there is no longer ANY existing "Unix on X86" vendors out there. (Ok - SUN has Solaris 10 on X86 - but we all know how that's going - and Solaris isn't "exactly" UNIX anyway). The potential loss of "up to $36MM" (that they never had in the first place really) from all those SCOX deals is more than worth it to see SCOX disappear completely from the face of the map. I'm sure IBM is only keeping their counterclaim option open simply to make sure that the dead decaying corpse of SCOX can be stamped out completely if it still had some sort of life left to it after Novell was done. If Novell were to let this deal go through, sure they would have their chance at their "30 some odd million in cash" - but then the little bits and pieces of the existing "SCOX UNIX business" move further away from the heel of their boot - and will be that much harder to stamp out.
This is precisely why there is "tivoization" - your device does not stand alone in the world. If you take a Tivo home, take it apart, reverse engineer it, and run AmigaOS on it - NO ONE will care - as long as you keep those changes to yourself and you don't hook the device to any network or content distribution stream. The fact that the device isn't supposed to be used in a "stand-alone" environment is precisely what drives companies to this sort of behavior. The device is meant to be connected to the rest of the world - through network, through airwaves, through cable tv and satellite signals. You can argue that "once those signals are in your house you can do whatever you want with them too" - that's a fine moral argument - but legally - it has been determined that those streams of data and their content do not belong to you, and if you want to decode them and use them, you have to follow the rules that they come with. If you don't like those rules - work to have them changed.
"Hacking the Tivo" changes the way you work with those data streams and thus bends or breaks the rules of the owners of those streams. To keep the owners of those data streams happy, the Tivo can't be designed to "easily circumvent" those original rules. If it could it would then be considered a tool in violation of the DMCA and other laws (I don't agree with most of those laws but they exist and that's another argument). If the "tivoization" of the device didn't happen, the content distributors would decide it doesn't play nice and put them out of business - most likely by not allowing them access to the content, or perhaps through legal means.
This work-around lets them have a "black box" that has some hidden operations in software, rather than hardware - thus making it easier to update and upgrade them - while still following the letter of the GPLv3 - the FOSS software on the device truly remains FOSS - you can do anything you want with it - and it won't interfere with the part of the box that makes it follow the rules. The device remains legal when it deals with the outside world and those outside streams - that don't belong to you - and you can change the interface or behavior of the part of the system that the FOSS software does operate.
Tivo has to write its own software to do the "black box" portion - no different than if it were hardware based on chips on the device - if they used GPL software in the black box portion - then we would have something to complain about if they don't release that to the public. As it is, they are doing what they have to to remain within the good graces of the providers of the data that the box is supposed to deal with - for if they don't - there will be no Tivo.
Probably about the same time as I bought my first hard drive to build my first "home grown" PC - 1995 or thereabouts - before that I never purchased a hard drive as my PC's came "all put together" from other family memebers who had their geek credits long before I did. The system I built that fine spring weekend in 1995 had a 800MB hard drive that I paid the beautiful price of $389 for - the CPU was a 486 dx2 66Mhz that ran me somewhere around $179 including mobo, it had a 4x CD-ROM drive, and 8MB of glorious RAM.
My current desktop PC build (put together 18 mos ago) has 2GB of RAM that ran me somewhere around $130. So - roughly 3 times as much RAM as that first PC had in hard drive space - for roughly 1/3 the price.
As for the solid state hard drives for PC's - especially laptops - there's no reason the drive couldn't include a small NiMH battery, and somewhere around 1GB of standard RAM as part of its controller circuitry - along with its 60, 100, 120, 180, or however many GB of flash RAM storage. It might add $30 or $40 to the price - but it would make for an amazing drive with no worries about write cycles - that RAM could be used as an intelligent write cache for the drive - with the micro-capacity battery included just enough to keep the controller and RAM working for as long as it takes to write that 1GB of cache back to storage. If you figure those writes could be made in 10 seconds, a battery with 4 or 5 minutes of capacity would be plenty. The controller architecture could be smart enough to only write "aged data" from the on-board cache chip. If your drive is "thrashing" due to swap file or whatever - those writes would all be taking place in RAM and the read-backs would come out of there rather than from the flash - only once the blocks of RAM aged a certain amount would they then be written back to the flash RAM on the drive. It could be a "percent time" or a "fixed time" setup - say for example every 500ms the RAM is "aged" and a check is made to see which blocks are the oldest - at that point the oldest 5% of used cache RAM blocks get written back into storage and the cache is "free". If there's no writes at all to the disk, in 10 seconds everything is back on flash and the RAM cache is free. If you have a program swapping in and out constantly because you're too cheap to buy enough system RAM, it's actually swapping to RAM on the drive - slightly slower than memory on your FSB, so there's a small performance hit, but much faster than if it were writing back and forth to Flash, and little to no wear on your flash takes place. If the laptop goes to sleep/standby/hibernation/dead battery/power loss - the small battery in the controller maintains the drive long enough to finish all the writes back. There's other details to be worked out - how to handle writes bigger than the RAM chip on board the controller (pass-through to the drive flash, etc) - but that's for the hardware engineers to figure out - I can't do all their work for them. It's the idea of a large enough RAM cache on board a flash drive to eliminate writing "often written data" that is what should happen here.
And to think - there's almost as much L2 Cache on my CPU now as there was hard drive space my first "IBM PC" computer I ever used (not built) had (4MB of on die L2 cache now, VS a 5MB Corvus drive in my 8088 - circa 1983).
I have faith we will see storage drives with Petabyte capacities around 2020 - from 1983 to 1996 (13yrs) went from 5MB to 5GB - I'm pretty sure by 2009 we'll see 5TB drives as we are already seeing 1TB drives in 2007. 13 years should see us at 1000x today's capacity - 1 petabyte - and we'll be talking about using terabyte flash and having 2 terabytes of RAM in our PC. Hmmm... Microsoft better really add some bloat to the next version of its OS to drive that demand!!!!!!!!!! That's even more than Vista with a service pack will use!
Ok enough going on topic and off topic. I'm all for solid state drives. Less power consumption. Faster access. Quiet. Cool. Extremely impact sho
Once SCO becomes officially bankrupt, and the amount of money they owe their debtors and others as determined by the courts is caluclated, the bankruptcy judge is going to order them to sell off any and all assets they do have - to start paying those debtors in some predetermined order. One of the only positive assets SCO has now are those support contracts for "historical and current use of OpenServer, etc." - they actually bring some money to the SCO table each month and have helped keep them alive during this never-ending zoo.
That means the bankruptcy judge will force them to find a suitable buyer for those support contracts and sell them off ASAP - from their financials it looks like their total sales revenue over the last several quarters hovered somewhere around $6MM - and of that it looks like about $1.2MM was for services - about 20% - they could probably find a buyer willing to pay in the range of $5MM (or more) for that portion of the business were it to come unencumbered with any of SCO's liabilities (as a judge would so order). It's probably one of the only profitable aspects there is to be sold off other than some furniture.
So no, SCO's actual "customers" who were stuck with their products for whatever reason (or, please help them, they LIKE their products) will most likely find their support coming from someone new who purchases that facet of the business at the bankruptcy "fire sale". Who will it be? Got me! If I knew that I'd be an investment analyst and not an IT geek.