Lodz has had electric trams since 1898 - and while it's not likely any of the original track or switches are in use, the system is not new. Turning at too rapid a rate will cause derailment. I've seen a fair number of older generation trams derailed on similar Polish systems, especially around the old town of Krakow. Somehow I doubt that Lodz have a spanking new fleet of low-floor trams that have required system-wide track upgrades to run. I imagine the trams that derailed were built in the 1960s.
As for the engineers being "grossly incompetent", I really don't think so. I wouldn't be at all surprised if the system hacked was decades old, designed by folks who had no reason to think that anyone would ever have the means or desire to circumvent the system.
(FYI those 1960s electric trains are far better transport than any diesel bus I've ever been on, and the new low-floor trams are like something out of a sci-fi movie!)
Having less active equipment in the field is actually the best long term asset play. Active gear in neighborhoods means more grief for the network operator - and more to upgrade down the path. Passive splitters mean that head end and cpe are the only upgrades necessary.
Cable shares this advantage with FIOS. Moving to DOCSIS 3.0 or a new FIOS technology means new a new head end, then new cpe. It doesn't mean touching an outdoor cabinet for every street in the coverage area.
There were a fair few people standing by and watching the show. If the police were really brutalizing him, why didn't anyone step in?
Look, here's the appropriate response if a mob of people are standing around watching a couple of officers torturing someone. Start picking up heavy objects and throwing them. Step in and stop the crime in action.
I don't think there was a crime here.
I think the guy was a pathetic sack of shit, needy for attention, and that he wanted to create a scene with the Police to prove some kind of idiotic point. They should have dragged him out of the building kicking and screaming far faster than they did.
This is (for the most part) true in New Zealand, where I live. There used to be a lot less bikes here. What it took to change was a realisation for a lot of people that cycling was a preferable way to commute, and then city planning authorities (who agreed) nudged it by re-designing many areas with cyclists in mind. Once that's in place, it's much easier for more people to take up cycling.
I'd disagree. I bought a bike around a month after I moved to Wellington in 2003. It took only a few trips through the city before I decided it was complete insanity to bike the streets here. This is after moving from Boston, where I biked to work through Brighton to Cambridge for a few years. The streets in Wellington are narrower, the cars faster, and the drivers are far less skilled.
And just in case you're interested (Wage tax data from 2005, sales taxes from 2001)
It's frustrating to see such numbers thrown around.
1. You chose the base tax rate in the US. My rate was 28% 2. You've neglected Social Security (6.2% I will never see) and Medicare (1.45% I will never see) 3. You've neglected State income taxes. In Massachusetts I paid 5%.
The last time I paid taxes in the US, my rate was almost 41%. I gave up when Bush invaded Iraq. Living in JesusLand just wasn't worth it anymore.
"when an employee comes in in the morning, have them log-in, and automatically download their VM from the server. This gives the benefits of network computing, in that they can sit anywhere"
Does this not conjure images of Y.T.'s mom, going in to work for the Feds in SnowCrash? Computer operators as an interchangable commodity; Desks with no personal effects, no paper, no identity; Sitting closest to the door so that late arrivers have to walk past you in the morning...
The fact is that, even though automated, the RIAA is correct most of the time that people are sharing music that is under the RIAA umbrella.
Where do you get this fact from? I'd say it's entirely unsubstantiated.
It's along the same lines as me saying "The fact is, Dave Schroeder is a corporate shill.". This is just based on what I've read online. No evidence, just a guess - could be wrong, but I don't need to back it up, do I?
A few years of digital prohibition, where the more skilled among us can make truckloads of money building grey/black-market hardware, workarounds, etc.
In the last ten years any capable geek has had the opportunity to make truckloads of money doing things of questionable legality. Offshore gambling & porn, to name two. Or how about the cable/satellite descrambler boxes (for sale only in Canada, of course). Chipping of playstations. Or cars, for that matter.
The fact is, most folks with skills don't have any desire to work on the fringe of legality, even if it means more money. That's not going to stop them from doing it in their own home. It's just going to mean that they won't make astronomical sums of money doing it.
Take an expensive Sanyo projector with DVI in, an expensive Denon DVD player with DVI out, and what do you get? A waste of $20,000.
Some HDCP issue is preventing the devices from working together. Six months later there are some unhappy people, not least of whom are the vendors who still hasn't been paid.
Ethernet is a local network protocol, and doesn't have much to do with the way you communicate across the internet. This will help anyone running more than one machine in a particular location.
This you say, but look at networks in Hong Kong & many European cities. Or Wellington, NZ, where I live and work. Metro Area Ethernet which connect hundreds of buildings - including residential blocks.
The future of delivery to Multi-tenant buildings (apartment & office blocks) is all about Ethernet. Anything built recently will have at least a CAT5 from the telco demarc point to each unit - and most blocks in the past ten years will have CAT3. Why spend the money on DSL and get an inferior product when you can drop a cheap switch in the Comms room of a building and give everyone an Ethernet VLAN?
Since A/B/G devices all operate under Part 15 and since the devices are designed and sold as consumer electronics devices, the FCC's approval process for sale of the devices removes the need for an FCC certified tech to do the installation.
AFAIK the mini-pci cards that go in laptops never have integral antennas. This means someone clueful needs to connect a tiny little u.fl pigtail inside the laptop to the card. Breaking this connector (easy to do on both the male or female end) can cause very bad things to happen in terms of RF, so I understand the warning. Linksys, D-Link et al. do not sell mini-pci cards to the public. I think only OEM cards can be purchased. I have worked with mini-pci a/b/g from Orinoco, Mikrotik, Wistron, and Ubiquiti and none have been consumer-friendly nor have any been available in consumer packaging.
Echoing the sentiments of the ACs who have replied to this, I too need to put in a good word for the NT kernel. It's excellent. It always works. I started working with NT 3.51 10+ years ago (same time I moved from Digital Unix to Linux) and have found it to be a great OS. Give it good hardware & software, (these days set it behind a firewall) and it will run for YEARS.
I managed an early Y2K program back in 1998 where we moved a network from 486/Win3.11/Novell to 586/NT4.0/NT Server. We didn't put removable media in the machines & didn't give Administrative rights to anyone. I wandered around the facility recently to find dozens of those ugly beige box clones still going. Thus happy to see NT kernel continuing in Vista (whenever that may happen...)
It's not going to work when the incoming water is so cold that it will freeze if you let it stop moving. Northerners leave the faucets dripping at night so that the pipes don't freeze solid.
So I didn't use dozens of these little beasts when I lived in Poland? Trust me, it gets cold there. The best systems were of course the natural gas based continuous heaters, but the electric jobs were very common over bathroom sinks. Even the old ones would scald you in the middle of winter if you weren't careful.
executives paying for the system want the system to cost them as little as possible, and make them as much as possible. Making them as much as possible usually means keeping customers, even if they infuriate their customer service reps.
Customers needing to circumvent voice systems could be costing a company more money in customer service costs than they generate in profit. A large faceless corporation peddling commodity products might be advised to let such customers take their business elsewhere.
I don't like living in the UK. Big brother really is watching us:(
You could move to New Zealand. Here due to the insane cost of broadband and the low funding of the police, such CCTV systems are a decade or more away.:-)
I seriously pity anyone who considers IT to be a `career path'. It is not and I certainly don't regard that way. I am a Software Engineer currently in college, and although for the time being I am employed as a cog within an IT infrastructure, in no way or shape do I ever lose focus.
College boy, grow the fuck up. IT is indeed a career path, and while in the corporate world I worked with hundreds of career IT folk. (That's out of 3,000 working in IT across a company I spent four years with) There's very little a large corporation in this world can do now without IT, and IT management are increasingly involved in business decisions. Get on your journal database and read some Venkatraman and stop making idiotic statements about IT on Slashdot.
Slashdot Mirror
Lodz has had electric trams since 1898 - and while it's not likely any of the original track or switches are in use, the system is not new. Turning at too rapid a rate will cause derailment. I've seen a fair number of older generation trams derailed on similar Polish systems, especially around the old town of Krakow. Somehow I doubt that Lodz have a spanking new fleet of low-floor trams that have required system-wide track upgrades to run. I imagine the trams that derailed were built in the 1960s.
As for the engineers being "grossly incompetent", I really don't think so. I wouldn't be at all surprised if the system hacked was decades old, designed by folks who had no reason to think that anyone would ever have the means or desire to circumvent the system.
(FYI those 1960s electric trains are far better transport than any diesel bus I've ever been on, and the new low-floor trams are like something out of a sci-fi movie!)
FIOS a "bad long term asset play?
Having less active equipment in the field is actually the best long term asset play. Active gear in neighborhoods means more grief for the network operator - and more to upgrade down the path. Passive splitters mean that head end and cpe are the only upgrades necessary.
Cable shares this advantage with FIOS. Moving to DOCSIS 3.0 or a new FIOS technology means new a new head end, then new cpe. It doesn't mean touching an outdoor cabinet for every street in the coverage area.
JBI watched the video.
There were a fair few people standing by and watching the show. If the police were really brutalizing him, why didn't anyone step in?
Look, here's the appropriate response if a mob of people are standing around watching a couple of officers torturing someone. Start picking up heavy objects and throwing them. Step in and stop the crime in action.
I don't think there was a crime here.
I think the guy was a pathetic sack of shit, needy for attention, and that he wanted to create a scene with the Police to prove some kind of idiotic point. They should have dragged him out of the building kicking and screaming far faster than they did.
JB
This is (for the most part) true in New Zealand, where I live. There used to be a lot less bikes here. What it took to change was a realisation for a lot of people that cycling was a preferable way to commute, and then city planning authorities (who agreed) nudged it by re-designing many areas with cyclists in mind. Once that's in place, it's much easier for more people to take up cycling.
I'd disagree. I bought a bike around a month after I moved to Wellington in 2003. It took only a few trips through the city before I decided it was complete insanity to bike the streets here. This is after moving from Boston, where I biked to work through Brighton to Cambridge for a few years. The streets in Wellington are narrower, the cars faster, and the drivers are far less skilled.
New Zealand has potential.
And just in case you're interested (Wage tax data from 2005, sales taxes from 2001)
It's frustrating to see such numbers thrown around.
1. You chose the base tax rate in the US. My rate was 28%
2. You've neglected Social Security (6.2% I will never see) and Medicare (1.45% I will never see)
3. You've neglected State income taxes. In Massachusetts I paid 5%.
The last time I paid taxes in the US, my rate was almost 41%. I gave up when Bush invaded Iraq. Living in JesusLand just wasn't worth it anymore.
20-30 MHz is very wideband for a radio
e Wave_Specs.pdf
How about 2x 700MHz channels?
http://www.bridgewave.com/wireless_products/Bridg
"when an employee comes in in the morning, have them log-in, and automatically download their VM from the server. This gives the benefits of network computing, in that they can sit anywhere"
Does this not conjure images of Y.T.'s mom, going in to work for the Feds in SnowCrash? Computer operators as an interchangable commodity; Desks with no personal effects, no paper, no identity; Sitting closest to the door so that late arrivers have to walk past you in the morning...
The fact is that, even though automated, the RIAA is correct most of the time that people are sharing music that is under the RIAA umbrella.
Where do you get this fact from? I'd say it's entirely unsubstantiated.
It's along the same lines as me saying "The fact is, Dave Schroeder is a corporate shill.". This is just based on what I've read online. No evidence, just a guess - could be wrong, but I don't need to back it up, do I?
JB
Sort of makes you wonder why they chose Norway/Sweden for 'training' runs :-)
Let's see... After a long, cold free fall, would you rather land:
a.) in a country of ubiquitous saunas and beautiful women
b.) in England
Canopy Wireless operates at 900, 2.4, & 5GHz - the wireless bit is to avoid the interference problems caused by using the MV lines.
Not just you. Any OS that releases a new version more than once a year is a bother. It's just too high maintenance.
A few years of digital prohibition, where the more skilled among us can make truckloads of money building grey/black-market hardware, workarounds, etc.
In the last ten years any capable geek has had the opportunity to make truckloads of money doing things of questionable legality. Offshore gambling & porn, to name two. Or how about the cable/satellite descrambler boxes (for sale only in Canada, of course). Chipping of playstations. Or cars, for that matter.
The fact is, most folks with skills don't have any desire to work on the fringe of legality, even if it means more money. That's not going to stop them from doing it in their own home. It's just going to mean that they won't make astronomical sums of money doing it.
Take an expensive Sanyo projector with DVI in, an expensive Denon DVD player with DVI out, and what do you get? A waste of $20,000.
Some HDCP issue is preventing the devices from working together. Six months later there are some unhappy people, not least of whom are the vendors who still hasn't been paid.
Ethernet is a local network protocol, and doesn't have much to do with the way you communicate across the internet. This will help anyone running more than one machine in a particular location.
This you say, but look at networks in Hong Kong & many European cities. Or Wellington, NZ, where I live and work. Metro Area Ethernet which connect hundreds of buildings - including residential blocks.
The future of delivery to Multi-tenant buildings (apartment & office blocks) is all about Ethernet. Anything built recently will have at least a CAT5 from the telco demarc point to each unit - and most blocks in the past ten years will have CAT3. Why spend the money on DSL and get an inferior product when you can drop a cheap switch in the Comms room of a building and give everyone an Ethernet VLAN?
Since A/B/G devices all operate under Part 15 and since the devices are designed and sold as consumer electronics devices, the FCC's approval process for sale of the devices removes the need for an FCC certified tech to do the installation.
AFAIK the mini-pci cards that go in laptops never have integral antennas. This means someone clueful needs to connect a tiny little u.fl pigtail inside the laptop to the card. Breaking this connector (easy to do on both the male or female end) can cause very bad things to happen in terms of RF, so I understand the warning. Linksys, D-Link et al. do not sell mini-pci cards to the public. I think only OEM cards can be purchased. I have worked with mini-pci a/b/g from Orinoco, Mikrotik, Wistron, and Ubiquiti and none have been consumer-friendly nor have any been available in consumer packaging.
Echoing the sentiments of the ACs who have replied to this, I too need to put in a good word for the NT kernel. It's excellent. It always works. I started working with NT 3.51 10+ years ago (same time I moved from Digital Unix to Linux) and have found it to be a great OS. Give it good hardware & software, (these days set it behind a firewall) and it will run for YEARS.
I managed an early Y2K program back in 1998 where we moved a network from 486/Win3.11/Novell to 586/NT4.0/NT Server. We didn't put removable media in the machines & didn't give Administrative rights to anyone. I wandered around the facility recently to find dozens of those ugly beige box clones still going. Thus happy to see NT kernel continuing in Vista (whenever that may happen...)
"Gee, judge, I have no idea how the cocaine got in my suitcase or who put it there. Can I leave now?"
This happens. Look at Australia.
There's a good reason I always lock my baggage. Of course last time I visisted the USA, the fuckers cut the locks off my suitcase.
Then you can have a 640x480 image (lower-res than a standard TV)
Not true. Standard TV in Slashdot-land is NTSC. Go do some homework.
That's possibly the coldest, worst thing that I've ever heard a company to do.
/ 2004/05/0005.cfm
In 2004 Pfizer withdrew funding from a New Zealand based cancer research centre over a dispute with Pharmac, the government (well, crown) entity that purchases pharmaceuticals for hospitals and health programmes. http://www.auckland.ac.nz/uoa/about/news/articles
The people who run America's large corporations are by and large not nice people. (Yeah, that means you Mr. Niblack, and your fucking lawyers.)
It's not going to work when the incoming water is so cold that it will freeze if you let it stop moving. Northerners leave the faucets dripping at night so that the pipes don't freeze solid.
So I didn't use dozens of these little beasts when I lived in Poland? Trust me, it gets cold there. The best systems were of course the natural gas based continuous heaters, but the electric jobs were very common over bathroom sinks. Even the old ones would scald you in the middle of winter if you weren't careful.
executives paying for the system want the system to cost them as little as possible, and make them as much as possible. Making them as much as possible usually means keeping customers, even if they infuriate their customer service reps.
Customers needing to circumvent voice systems could be costing a company more money in customer service costs than they generate in profit. A large faceless corporation peddling commodity products might be advised to let such customers take their business elsewhere.
I don't like living in the UK. Big brother really is watching us :(
:-)
You could move to New Zealand. Here due to the insane cost of broadband and the low funding of the police, such CCTV systems are a decade or more away.
I seriously pity anyone who considers IT to be a `career path'. It is not and I certainly don't regard that way. I am a Software Engineer currently in college, and although for the time being I am employed as a cog within an IT infrastructure, in no way or shape do I ever lose focus.
College boy, grow the fuck up. IT is indeed a career path, and while in the corporate world I worked with hundreds of career IT folk. (That's out of 3,000 working in IT across a company I spent four years with) There's very little a large corporation in this world can do now without IT, and IT management are increasingly involved in business decisions. Get on your journal database and read some Venkatraman and stop making idiotic statements about IT on Slashdot.
And stuff your fancy clothes while you're at it.
Read about propane fumigation for diesel engines. It works.
h tml
Try here: http://www.dieselsmoke.com/info/propaneinjection.