First, his linguistic analysis is broken (esp. the German vs. English one) - but others posted that earlier.
A simple (in)validation / common sense check should have taken place before running off too far - unfortunately it did not happen:
Ireland and US/UK speak (nearly) the same language - English. Yet they are on the (extreme) opposite sides of the scale, with Australia, New Zealand and Canada spread in between.
Switzerland, Austria and Germany (and partially Luxembourg, and with some bending Netherlands too) speak German (Dutch is close). All these countries are spread over the scale, too (even if to a lesser extent).
Silimar with French: Luxembourg (in parts), Switzerland (in parts), Belgium, Canada (Quebec) and France are spread, too.
Similar with Italian in Switzerland (top third) and Italy (lower third).
Similar Spanish: Chile in the top third, Mexico right in the middle, Spain in the 3rd Quarter.
RSX - thus it probably was a DEC PDP-11? Those were available with CMOS or core memory (core as in: miniature ferrit rings on thin cables - one for each bit). Depending on which memory it probably had a CPU speed of ~2MHz
No: Flash is more expensive per GB when measured in quantities.
Yes: look at PDA memorey requirements, or PCs just for Mail, Web and a bit of letter writing - there 1 GB is plenty. And in Flash still cheaper than the cheapest HD (80GB or where is the cheapest HD nowadays?)
Basically a power house comes in two versions: well shielded or (nearly) not.
If there is (good) shielding, there is no health risk and you cannot tap the leaking field (at least not above academical level). Noone is transgressing or tapping anything.
If the power house is not shielded, the owner is sending out emag fields into Cliff's property - unasked for. So what Cliff does with this on his own ground is up to his own. As long as he is not exceeding his property limits and (especially) not touching anything of the powerhouse.
And that last part is important: not touching anything (especially not attaching cables) and staying on his own ground.
This really is comparable to the old neighbour conflict with fruits from a tree that has branches haning over the border onto/over the neighbour's lawn: the fruits from the tree belong to the person above which ground they hang. But of course the tree owner is allowed to cut the overhanging branch and the neighbour cannot do anything about that.
Do you normally have to pay for fruits? Yes. If you don't pay for fruits falling from your neighbour's tree, what happens? He ignores it or cuts off the tree/branch. And if you don't pay? He can't do anything except ignoring or cutting off (well, complaining and shouting always is possible, but that's not the point). Is the poster (Chris) trying to take what is sent to his property? Yes. Is it theft? No.
Back top coil-tapping the EM emissions of a leaking powerhouse: Chris can try to collect power with an air coil on *his*own* ground (*not* touch *nor* surround the powerhouse). OTOH he has no service claim against the power house owner who is always allowed to shut doen the power house or to install shielding or non-leaking transformators.
There has been such a case here in Germany - where the power company lost against such a tapping air coil on a neighbour's ground property. This especially as it is a form of protest against missing shielding. IIRC he complained against high EM fields, thew company said "there is nothing leaking". So he coil-tapped. Then the powerhouse's company either has to confirm (too high) EM fields leaking and has to install proper shielding - or stay it's ground, insist that the shielding is sufficient and ignore the person tapping the "non-existing" or "neglectable" EM fields. But as I said: German law - I am not sure about a US equivalent.
No, it's not illegal - as long as you (and your coil) stay on your own ground and do not tamper with the power house. If you can tap power just by placing something on your own ground (*NOT* attached to the power house), then you are just "harvesting" stuff on your own soil. The argumentation is similar to harvesting fruits from the neighbour's tree if branches grow your ground (though only from those over your ground). In addition - if they complain - you can probably sue them for transgression as they are commercially using your ground without your permission...;-)
No - you must stay on your own ground, so nothing to be placed around the "foreign" power house. But with a gaussmeter or small coil + sensitive voltmeter you can deduct how the magnetic fields running and how your tapping-coil should be placed.
A standard (or oversized) keyboard with a guidance grid (key-/finger-sized holes) mounted a few mm above the keys. Hand and fingers can rest and tremble until the correct key(hole) is found and pressed. Inhibits accidentally pressing the wrong key and is comparatively cheap. Hazardous for finger joints for people with too forceful tremor or spastic jerks, though. See e.g. http://www.keytools.com/keyboards/guarded.asp (found trough google). Decreasing or disabling autotype/repeat will help here as will anti-repetition keyboard drivers.
Input systems where you select the key with buttons, laserpointer, shouts, etc. like http://www.keytools.com/keyboards/lucy_comms.asp (google again). A famous example is the text2sound machine Stephen Hawking is using. Not cheap if done in hardware.
Similar to above - but useful even if her tremors are too high for moused usage: Get a joystick/gamepad she can handle - or re-build one from a cheap gamepad (to be dissected - keep the electronics, dump the mechanics) and low-injury (light-/emergency) switches where she does not scratch herself on the edges. Set her PC to use the microsoft virtual keyboard click/select mode mode http://www.microsoft.com/enable/training/windowsxp /usingkeyboard.aspx
If her tremors are even to high for that, set the virtual keyboard to scanning mode and give her one single trigger (from the gamepad/joystick you built before). Select a trigger/switch she can control best (finger, hand, foot, head, shoulder, tongue, breathing,...
While this is not a direct answer to the request, it might be helpful in times of distress:
If you encounter a disrupted organizer (AOLs local storage), you will be able to rescue at most of the message bodies (no pun intended) with http://wyae.de/software/aolexport/
This will give you only text files containing one (or a few) messages a time - but better than nothing. It won't help you repairing anything nor rescue contacts nor favourites. So just make sure to have a backup copy of your organizer before updating/experimenting...;-)
Hot-swapping disks or PSUs? Not for me - I'm hot-swapping complete servers...
Really - we're running several systems in a distributed cluster. If one server fails, it's simply swapped against another. Not as readily/open as Google infrastructure, but fast enough.
While they are designed to be solid whitebox servers, three of them cost only as much as a "redundant" server (hot-swap, double-PSU).
As for "quality" servers: I've had times when Compaq (now HP) servers were blowing (hot-swappable) PSUs away in rows - failure rate way above 60% within the first two months, usually taking (line/UPS) fuse and/or the other PSUs with them. Okay, that was back in times when a PentiumPro was the top choice in servermarket (and Xeons just starting), but I haven't had Compaqs since then...
Yeah, it was with VMS and its smaller brother RSX-11M+ (and probably derivates). Each file got an additional "dot number" appended. A full (!) copy was saved (with raised number) each time the file was written. Accessing the file without version number simply gave you the currentmost one.
But with running low on disk space all the time (those were the days when a hard disc had 5MB = five MegaBytes total capacity) , frequent use of the PURGE command erased all old copies quite often too early...
If (disk)space and performance is not a problem (i.e. HD below 200GB, non-fancy single CPU), you could simply go with two (or three) cheap PC boxen instead of one "data center quality" RAID machine (for the same total price). If you mirror data+setup over from "production" to "standby" daily, any downtime due to any failure (HD, controller, mobo, OS, filesystem) can be minimized to 1-2 minutes (switch service over to the standby) - continuing with yesterdays data, which should be sufficient for most cases.
Integrating a backup/backlog (e.g. 3 months data) into a mirror setup is possible in several ways - my company does offer such a solution (managed service, that is).
Continuing with current data instead of yesterday's status is quite a bit more challenging, though...
A gap in your resume? No, hell, you did not do "nothing". You were overseas (cultural exchange, maybe even a foreign language?!?), were responsible manager (tech, setups, deals, money, whatever) for a long term tour (months at least), sold your service directly to customers (pre-sales support anyone?) etc. If you've done something - use it to boost your CV.
Whom do you think I would hire for a (international?) project: a hermitic bit mage - or a coder that maybe even was in that country, did some band/tour management and is used to working within a team and under stress?
Noone will complain about a "tried, but didn't work out" sidetrip in your CV - especially if you came back with valuable skills and experiences.
Short: Live your dream. And tell about it.
Longer: I made the experience that the only people successful in their job are the ones that love it. So if you stay back at a "safe" but boring job and mourn your missed chance, you'll stay mediocre (best) - and will probably be replaced by someone better (or more enthusiastic).
People that tried to live their dream and learnt that it just was not possible will probably try their best at their second choice for their dream of life, too. And they'll be good at it. Each time.
On my website(s) MS-IE leads with 70% hits, but falls behind Mozilla/Netscape which leads with 60-90% page views. MS-IE usually loads images again and again, Mozilla does not.
So don't trust any statistics you didn't forge by your own hands.As I'd measure usage more by "page views" (= HTML downloads) more "hits" (any download), Mozilla leads clearly, leaving MS-IE on far-off second place.
Simple: provide good content that other people are interested in. The better and/or unique your content, the higher your visibility. Remember: visibility != number of hits.
Other question: why do you want more traffic? Just to have a higher hit count? Except if you are hosting a number of paying web-advertizements, I don't see any benefit in that.
...is (~an order of magnitude) bigger with USB. This can be a real issue if you're doing (many) multitracks, where latencies add up.
Higher CPU usage and bandwidth limitation (recording standard 24/96 will "max out" USB-1 at full duplex) are other issues you (usually) don't face with PCI cards or Firewire stuff.
Price difference is not an issue usually - better ADC/DAC are expensive in every packing (PCI/USB/Firewire).
Yes, it is advantagous to have the ADC/DAC remote from the EM-noisy PC enclosure - but the max. (specified) cable length of ~1m (correct me here please if my memory is not right - yes, I know that usually longer cables beyond the max. specification still work with a number of devices) is a bit short for nice usage above the desk.
A "real" VPN gives you a full IP channel between the connected sites - whereas the HTTPS solutions only give you a terminal-server thingie. So this "second gen VPN" is not at all usable for Server2Server or Site2Site connections - only (human) Client2Server.
Second problem is that the client itself does not authenticate properly against the server. Problem again for nun-human client (usually).
...not really. 1.5J is just double as much as an average "SoftAir" pistol. These are good enough for a "ouch", but cannot even penetrate bare skin. For a "real" weapon you need a muzzle velocity that is ~3 orders of magnitude higher than in the current model (i.e. km/s instead of m/s).
Cudos to the design though - the gun looks nice. Much nicer than all the other Gauss-thingies I have seen so far...
Set up a shack (maybe even a ship container) in your backyard where you install the servers. That will not only separate you from danger of fire, but keep the noise and heat out of your home, too.
The solitary PC you use as terminal can^H^H^Hshould be switched off during the night or absence. So no problem here.
If the servers burn you only have to kill the power line leading to the shack/container - just let them burn (if they still do after power cut) and have the fire brigate quench the remains. As someone said before: it's cheaper to replace a few servers than to install a fire extinguishing system - at last if you have current backups and moderately common hardware.
Nope - much simpler: you escalate the problem that not all projects can be fulfilled (i.e. sold to the customer). Spell "financial and/or customer loss" to upper (!) management and the very most suddenly become very rational. That's usually not nice to the middle man(agament) - i.e. the one between you and the uppermanagement - but quite effective.
While reducing staff projects upon projects were piled at a big5 company I worked for. At one point we had to say "Stop".
Did not walk out.
We compiled a list of ToDo's, went to our superior (okay, our superior's superior) and told him to give all these Priority-A-1-Alpha projects unique numbers. He has the big picture - or is at least paid to make decisions. So he decides. Not us.
He tried to argue (you must know - you're the techies), even actually tried to walk away. We said: okay, then we'll assume you hand us a blanko cheque okay to priorize. We'll then have this (interesting, but only moderately urgent) project with top priority (which still was sensible/okay but not the most urgent one) and continue down the list after finnishing.
No! He cried. Other projects...! We handed him the list again: Here. Numbers. Nonrepeating. You decide - or we have to. You know our suggestion. Decision still is your responsibility (i.e. your neck). So he told uns a preliminary No.1 - and followed up with a clean priority list.
With this we were able to work without overtime. Just worked 40(+epsilon) hours a week, and had priorities to fend off requests for "just a bit more" work (More work on your project? Then talk about priorities with Mr.X).
As for "a bit more overtime" - overtime and crunch mode only works for very limited ammounts of time (common knowledge is max. 2 weeks). After that stress-induced errors and illness have a very offsetting effect. If you're more stress-resistant that the remainder of your team, just fall back to the average to take speed and pressure out of the system. Noone can prove wether you really cannot find the one proper file among all the garbage crunch-mode-produced yestarday. It's very hard to differenciate between real symptomes of stress-induced illness or faked ones.
It even is a great opportunity to you, your team and even the company to introduce a task delegation and priorizing system - or other ones to steer projects and processes (e.g. change control procedures). Just to make sure, the really important business cases are handled properly and quality-assured, of course...;-)
Escalation:
If the problem is your direct superior (S1), walk to his superior (S2). Or to his superior's superior (S3). If he understands the problem - fine. If not, start bouncing the problems back to them. They have to decide on priorities: "Which one - A or B - decide NOW!" - where the NOW is important as the project is important and must be complete NOW (so it's not your NOW, but his or the customer's one). You even can use it to jump levels (beyond/around S1 to S2) - simply have your colleague do the same talk with S1 simultaneously - so you can't reach him for decision and so you went to S2 because of the project's utter importance. If the answers contradict, go back to S2+S1 and tell that S1 (or S2) just ordered you otherwise (sorry for the overlap - it's just due to the hectic...), and you want a confirmation.
Simply bounce the pressure back. They have to slice the work into managable chunks - that's what managers are for. Just bounce it back for re-assignment. Because you want to see the project done, too (of course) and see THIS (chunk) will not be working (or contradicting with other stuff).
So get priorization and escalate, i.e. bounce irresponsible pressure, untaken responsibilities and not done decisions back to from where they come and where they belong. All for the sake of professional work and successful projects, of course (*NO* irony here).
This can even enhance your own position, especially if you give your superiors good (priority) suggestions and decision reationales. And suddenly you're not only programmer or admin, but on the track to project manager...
Okay, who's suspicious? Depending on state even carrying automatic rifles is legal or normal.
But what about an unusual number of orientalic-looking people gathering in a house? Having the police storm a family gathering (birthday party, wedding) always is fun, isn't it?
OTOH the family father who carries home his grocey shoppings (a kilo sugar and herbicide every evening) is completely unsuspicious, isn't he? Homebuilding makeshift-bombs made easy.
So: everyone is suspicious - just to be safe. And police won't know where to start digging though all those "alerts" streaming in...
What do you need - music or speech?
on
Wireless VOIP?
·
· Score: 1
You did not tell the business need - do you want to record a music CD (musical, etc.) - or just archive a podium discussion?
For the latter you could try DECT cordless (headset?) phones and a base station that supports conference.
But for music you don't want to use any of the VoIP codecs. If you want to record and do decent mixdown you'll need raw audio - preferrably 24bit @44.1kHz. Plus analogue compressor/limiter in front of the A/D to prevent digital clipping. Plus mini-PC for network connection plus WLAN infrastructure.
So I assume the oldfashioned way will be much cheaper, smaller and easier to handle.
Second thought: do you really need wireless? Maybe you can fix some of the people enough to be cableable.
Maybe you can even record them overall in artificial-head-type (or) at a distance instead of close-miked. This way you only need 2 (decent) cabled mikes. May be a problem with (loud) audience, though...
Exactly - that was the point: first decide on what you need (live? studio?) - then decide what fits your need.
An analogue recorder can go way further without compressor/limiter (thus saving money). The analogue saturation/distortion on the cassette/tape is quite okay for most cases you run in in live recordings.
But if you intend to pingpong or record "alternative" tracks - there the digital sisters beat the analogue deck hands down, no discussion.
Well, recording capacity is another point. 20 hours live 4track = 28 cassettes = 25 GB (4x @44.1/16). You'll hardly find the latter in the smaller decks.
So again: make a checklist on what you need - and only after that, choose wisely;-)
Slashdot Mirror
First, his linguistic analysis is broken (esp. the German vs. English one) - but others posted that earlier.
A simple (in)validation / common sense check should have taken place before running off too far - unfortunately it did not happen:
Ireland and US/UK speak (nearly) the same language - English. Yet they are on the (extreme) opposite sides of the scale, with Australia, New Zealand and Canada spread in between.
Switzerland, Austria and Germany (and partially Luxembourg, and with some bending Netherlands too) speak German (Dutch is close). All these countries are spread over the scale, too (even if to a lesser extent).
Silimar with French: Luxembourg (in parts), Switzerland (in parts), Belgium, Canada (Quebec) and France are spread, too.
Similar with Italian in Switzerland (top third) and Italy (lower third).
Similar Spanish: Chile in the top third, Mexico right in the middle, Spain in the 3rd Quarter.
Call me old-school: 10-20 kBytes for the HTML (depending on contents) plus 2kB for the icon (wich stays the same on all pages).
RSX - thus it probably was a DEC PDP-11? Those were available with CMOS or core memory (core as in: miniature ferrit rings on thin cables - one for each bit). Depending on which memory it probably had a CPU speed of ~2MHz
.ZIP-Tool (the one with a GUI)? Probably much more than the 100k (=0.1M) FloppyOffice's 100k-zipper needs...
Today it still is possible to write great software with small footprint, e.g. for windows at http://www.tinyapps.org/ or http://www.xtort.net/office/floppyoffice.php
One example: how big is your
No: Flash is more expensive per GB when measured in quantities.
Yes: look at PDA memorey requirements, or PCs just for Mail, Web and a bit of letter writing - there 1 GB is plenty. And in Flash still cheaper than the cheapest HD (80GB or where is the cheapest HD nowadays?)
Basically a power house comes in two versions: well shielded or (nearly) not.
If there is (good) shielding, there is no health risk and you cannot tap the leaking field (at least not above academical level). Noone is transgressing or tapping anything.
If the power house is not shielded, the owner is sending out emag fields into Cliff's property - unasked for. So what Cliff does with this on his own ground is up to his own. As long as he is not exceeding his property limits and (especially) not touching anything of the powerhouse.
And that last part is important: not touching anything (especially not attaching cables) and staying on his own ground.
This really is comparable to the old neighbour conflict with fruits from a tree that has branches haning over the border onto/over the neighbour's lawn: the fruits from the tree belong to the person above which ground they hang. But of course the tree owner is allowed to cut the overhanging branch and the neighbour cannot do anything about that.
Do you normally have to pay for fruits? Yes. If you don't pay for fruits falling from your neighbour's tree, what happens? He ignores it or cuts off the tree/branch. And if you don't pay? He can't do anything except ignoring or cutting off (well, complaining and shouting always is possible, but that's not the point). Is the poster (Chris) trying to take what is sent to his property? Yes. Is it theft? No.
Back top coil-tapping the EM emissions of a leaking powerhouse: Chris can try to collect power with an air coil on *his*own* ground (*not* touch *nor* surround the powerhouse). OTOH he has no service claim against the power house owner who is always allowed to shut doen the power house or to install shielding or non-leaking transformators.
There has been such a case here in Germany - where the power company lost against such a tapping air coil on a neighbour's ground property. This especially as it is a form of protest against missing shielding. IIRC he complained against high EM fields, thew company said "there is nothing leaking". So he coil-tapped. Then the powerhouse's company either has to confirm (too high) EM fields leaking and has to install proper shielding - or stay it's ground, insist that the shielding is sufficient and ignore the person tapping the "non-existing" or "neglectable" EM fields. But as I said: German law - I am not sure about a US equivalent.
Other things I have seen:
Good luck!
While this is not a direct answer to the request, it might be helpful in times of distress:
;-)
If you encounter a disrupted organizer (AOLs local storage), you will be able to rescue at most of the message bodies (no pun intended) with
http://wyae.de/software/aolexport/
This will give you only text files containing one (or a few) messages a time - but better than nothing. It won't help you repairing anything nor rescue contacts nor favourites. So just make sure to have a backup copy of your organizer before updating/experimenting...
Databases are synchonized by (builtin) DB replication.
Files either by rsync (if changing seldom) or network block device (bit experimental here).
Hot-swapping disks or PSUs? Not for me - I'm hot-swapping complete servers...
Really - we're running several systems in a distributed cluster. If one server fails, it's simply swapped against another. Not as readily/open as Google infrastructure, but fast enough.
While they are designed to be solid whitebox servers, three of them cost only as much as a "redundant" server (hot-swap, double-PSU).
As for "quality" servers: I've had times when Compaq (now HP) servers were blowing (hot-swappable) PSUs away in rows - failure rate way above 60% within the first two months, usually taking (line/UPS) fuse and/or the other PSUs with them.
Okay, that was back in times when a PentiumPro was the top choice in servermarket (and Xeons just starting), but I haven't had Compaqs since then...
Yeah, it was with VMS and its smaller brother RSX-11M+ (and probably derivates). Each file got an additional "dot number" appended. A full (!) copy was saved (with raised number) each time the file was written. Accessing the file without version number simply gave you the currentmost one.
But with running low on disk space all the time (those were the days when a hard disc had 5MB = five MegaBytes total capacity) , frequent use of the PURGE command erased all old copies quite often too early...
If (disk)space and performance is not a problem (i.e. HD below 200GB, non-fancy single CPU), you could simply go with two (or three) cheap PC boxen instead of one "data center quality" RAID machine (for the same total price). If you mirror data+setup over from "production" to "standby" daily, any downtime due to any failure (HD, controller, mobo, OS, filesystem) can be minimized to 1-2 minutes (switch service over to the standby) - continuing with yesterdays data, which should be sufficient for most cases.
Integrating a backup/backlog (e.g. 3 months data) into a mirror setup is possible in several ways - my company does offer such a solution (managed service, that is).
Continuing with current data instead of yesterday's status is quite a bit more challenging, though...
A gap in your resume? No, hell, you did not do "nothing". You were overseas (cultural exchange, maybe even a foreign language?!?), were responsible manager (tech, setups, deals, money, whatever) for a long term tour (months at least), sold your service directly to customers (pre-sales support anyone?) etc. If you've done something - use it to boost your CV.
Whom do you think I would hire for a (international?) project: a hermitic bit mage - or a coder that maybe even was in that country, did some band/tour management and is used to working within a team and under stress?
Noone will complain about a "tried, but didn't work out" sidetrip in your CV - especially if you came back with valuable skills and experiences.
Short: Live your dream. And tell about it.
Longer: I made the experience that the only people successful in their job are the ones that love it. So if you stay back at a "safe" but boring job and mourn your missed chance, you'll stay mediocre (best) - and will probably be replaced by someone better (or more enthusiastic).
People that tried to live their dream and learnt that it just was not possible will probably try their best at their second choice for their dream of life, too. And they'll be good at it. Each time.
On my website(s) MS-IE leads with 70% hits, but falls behind Mozilla/Netscape which leads with 60-90% page views. MS-IE usually loads images again and again, Mozilla does not.
So don't trust any statistics you didn't forge by your own hands.As I'd measure usage more by "page views" (= HTML downloads) more "hits" (any download), Mozilla leads clearly, leaving MS-IE on far-off second place.
Simple: provide good content that other people are interested in. The better and/or unique your content, the higher your visibility. Remember: visibility != number of hits.
Other question: why do you want more traffic? Just to have a higher hit count? Except if you are hosting a number of paying web-advertizements, I don't see any benefit in that.
I guess ipxtunnelP X-HOWTO-15. html) did not help you?
...) don't implement IPX - just IP.
(http://www.linux.org/docs/ldp/howto/I
Beware: most VPN solutions (IPSec, PPTP,
...is (~an order of magnitude) bigger with USB. This can be a real issue if you're doing (many) multitracks, where latencies add up.
Higher CPU usage and bandwidth limitation (recording standard 24/96 will "max out" USB-1 at full duplex) are other issues you (usually) don't face with PCI cards or Firewire stuff.
Price difference is not an issue usually - better ADC/DAC are expensive in every packing (PCI/USB/Firewire).
Yes, it is advantagous to have the ADC/DAC remote from the EM-noisy PC enclosure - but the max. (specified) cable length of ~1m (correct me here please if my memory is not right - yes, I know that usually longer cables beyond the max. specification still work with a number of devices) is a bit short for nice usage above the desk.
A "real" VPN gives you a full IP channel between the connected sites - whereas the HTTPS solutions only give you a terminal-server thingie. So this "second gen VPN" is not at all usable for Server2Server or Site2Site connections - only (human) Client2Server.
Second problem is that the client itself does not authenticate properly against the server. Problem again for nun-human client (usually).
...not really. 1.5J is just double as much as an average "SoftAir" pistol.
These are good enough for a "ouch", but cannot even penetrate bare skin.
For a "real" weapon you need a muzzle velocity that is ~3 orders of magnitude higher than in the current model (i.e. km/s instead of m/s).
Cudos to the design though - the gun looks nice. Much nicer than all the other Gauss-thingies I have seen so far...
Set up a shack (maybe even a ship container) in your backyard where you install the servers. That will not only separate you from danger of fire, but keep the noise and heat out of your home, too.
The solitary PC you use as terminal can^H^H^Hshould be switched off during the night or absence. So no problem here.
If the servers burn you only have to kill the power line leading to the shack/container - just let them burn (if they still do after power cut) and have the fire brigate quench the remains. As someone said before: it's cheaper to replace a few servers than to install a fire extinguishing system - at last if you have current backups and moderately common hardware.
Nope - much simpler: you escalate the problem that not all projects can be fulfilled (i.e. sold to the customer). Spell "financial and/or customer loss" to upper (!) management and the very most suddenly become very rational. That's usually not nice to the middle man(agament) - i.e. the one between you and the uppermanagement - but quite effective.
;-)
"Hey, nothing personal - it's only business..."
No, I am not evil. But sometimes...
Been there, didn't do that.
;-)
While reducing staff projects upon projects were piled at a big5 company I worked for. At one point we had to say "Stop".
Did not walk out.
We compiled a list of ToDo's, went to our superior (okay, our superior's superior) and told him to give all these Priority-A-1-Alpha projects unique numbers. He has the big picture - or is at least paid to make decisions. So he decides. Not us.
He tried to argue (you must know - you're the techies), even actually tried to walk away. We said: okay, then we'll assume you hand us a blanko cheque okay to priorize. We'll then have this (interesting, but only moderately urgent) project with top priority (which still was sensible/okay but not the most urgent one) and continue down the list after finnishing.
No! He cried. Other projects...! We handed him the list again: Here. Numbers. Nonrepeating. You decide - or we have to. You know our suggestion. Decision still is your responsibility (i.e. your neck). So he told uns a preliminary No.1 - and followed up with a clean priority list.
With this we were able to work without overtime. Just worked 40(+epsilon) hours a week, and had priorities to fend off requests for "just a bit more" work (More work on your project? Then talk about priorities with Mr.X).
As for "a bit more overtime" - overtime and crunch mode only works for very limited ammounts of time (common knowledge is max. 2 weeks). After that stress-induced errors and illness have a very offsetting effect. If you're more stress-resistant that the remainder of your team, just fall back to the average to take speed and pressure out of the system. Noone can prove wether you really cannot find the one proper file among all the garbage crunch-mode-produced yestarday. It's very hard to differenciate between real symptomes of stress-induced illness or faked ones.
It even is a great opportunity to you, your team and even the company to introduce a task delegation and priorizing system - or other ones to steer projects and processes (e.g. change control procedures). Just to make sure, the really important business cases are handled properly and quality-assured, of course...
Escalation:
If the problem is your direct superior (S1), walk to his superior (S2). Or to his superior's superior (S3). If he understands the problem - fine. If not, start bouncing the problems back to them. They have to decide on priorities: "Which one - A or B - decide NOW!" - where the NOW is important as the project is important and must be complete NOW (so it's not your NOW, but his or the customer's one). You even can use it to jump levels (beyond/around S1 to S2) - simply have your colleague do the same talk with S1 simultaneously - so you can't reach him for decision and so you went to S2 because of the project's utter importance. If the answers contradict, go back to S2+S1 and tell that S1 (or S2) just ordered you otherwise (sorry for the overlap - it's just due to the hectic...), and you want a confirmation.
Simply bounce the pressure back. They have to slice the work into managable chunks - that's what managers are for. Just bounce it back for re-assignment. Because you want to see the project done, too (of course) and see THIS (chunk) will not be working (or contradicting with other stuff).
So get priorization and escalate, i.e. bounce irresponsible pressure, untaken responsibilities and not done decisions back to from where they come and where they belong. All for the sake of professional work and successful projects, of course (*NO* irony here).
This can even enhance your own position, especially if you give your superiors good (priority) suggestions and decision reationales. And suddenly you're not only programmer or admin, but on the track to project manager...
Qapla'!
Okay, who's suspicious? Depending on state even carrying automatic rifles is legal or normal.
But what about an unusual number of orientalic-looking people gathering in a house? Having the police storm a family gathering (birthday party, wedding) always is fun, isn't it?
OTOH the family father who carries home his grocey shoppings (a kilo sugar and herbicide every evening) is completely unsuspicious, isn't he? Homebuilding makeshift-bombs made easy.
So: everyone is suspicious - just to be safe. And police won't know where to start digging though all those "alerts" streaming in...
You did not tell the business need - do you want to record a music CD (musical, etc.) - or just archive a podium discussion?
For the latter you could try DECT cordless (headset?) phones and a base station that supports conference.
But for music you don't want to use any of the VoIP codecs. If you want to record and do decent mixdown you'll need raw audio - preferrably 24bit @44.1kHz. Plus analogue compressor/limiter in front of the A/D to prevent digital clipping. Plus mini-PC for network connection plus WLAN infrastructure.
So I assume the oldfashioned way will be much cheaper, smaller and easier to handle.
Second thought: do you really need wireless? Maybe you can fix some of the people enough to be cableable.
Maybe you can even record them overall in artificial-head-type (or) at a distance instead of close-miked. This way you only need 2 (decent) cabled mikes. May be a problem with (loud) audience, though...
Exactly - that was the point: first decide on what you need (live? studio?) - then decide what fits your need.
;-)
An analogue recorder can go way further without compressor/limiter (thus saving money). The analogue saturation/distortion on the cassette/tape is quite okay for most cases you run in in live recordings.
But if you intend to pingpong or record "alternative" tracks - there the digital sisters beat the analogue deck hands down, no discussion.
Well, recording capacity is another point. 20 hours live 4track = 28 cassettes = 25 GB (4x @44.1/16). You'll hardly find the latter in the smaller decks.
So again: make a checklist on what you need - and only after that, choose wisely