First off, he's not talking about 3G. Not even close. If the Slashdot posting had said 2.5G, I'd have ignored it. I mean, I've been using GPRS in Boston on T-Mobile's network for over two years, and it's nothing to write about. He can't even read his email on his phone! Bah. I was using Outlook on my iPaq using a bluetooth connection to my GPRS enabled Nokia 6330i almost a year ago.
"Diesels DO get great mileage, but have a horrific emissions problems - everyone has been behind a pretty, old Mercedes coupe to just get choked by the fumes as it pulls away from the light."
You've obviously been mistaking the "TDI" badge on many new Volkswagens for a "GTI" badge as they fly by you on the road. Modern diesels do not have horrific emissions problems. In fact, while thier (invisible) particulate emissions are higher than gas engines, their N02 emissions (think acid rain) are actually lower than gas engines.
You must also consider the environmental impact of refining and transporting fuel. Any car that gets 45 mpg (US) is going to be better for the environment than one that gets 23 mpg, even if that 23 mpg is a LEV gas engine car with no particulate emissions. Remember, the oil you burn as gas is being shipped half-way around the world using diesel powered ships, then to refining, then to gas stations using diesel powered trucks.
I think not. Sure 1559 volunteers may be "promoting" IT in their roles, but there certainly are not 1559 Peace Corps volunteers working in IT. The vast majority of these people are English teachers who have a secondary project of trying to improve their school's computer lab, often using "creative grant-writing" techniques to appropriate funds marked for women's health or community development.
Until "IT" is a Peace Corps job category like Education, Agriculture, Health, and Environment, Peace Corps will not be taking IT seriously.
Let's hope this space elevator's fibers are a little more sturdy than the mast of Team NZ's yacht.
"AUCKLAND, New Zealand The meltdown of Team New Zealand, the America's Cup defender, continued on Friday when, on the third leg of Race 4 against the Swiss boat Alinghi, the Kiwis' mast exploded into a heap of carbon fiber shards." (NYTimes)
Whodathunk that one day we'd be reading a story titled "Apple:..." with an IBM icon? Maybe I'm getting old, but I think it's kinda cool.
When I pried the heatsink off my brand-new Power Macintosh 7100/66 (um, nine years ago?) I found a gleaming blue plate with IBM in big white letters on top. It's no biggie.
Really we should just come up with one icon for M$ and one for everyone else. (shall we call them the rebel alliance?)
We've just managed to squeeze 2k pro onto our old NT workstations (P166), and they chug along at an only-just-usable pace
A quick note on this. It's not the processing power that's important here, it's the memory. Find some surplus 72 pin simms and give each box 256 MB ram. The machines will be more than usable for Win2k and Office 2k. I have had much success with this formula using circa 1997 hardware. (AOpen motherboards and IBM/Cyrix 166 mhz chips)
I disagree with you about home-grown software being an asset.
At the end of the day, an asset is something that creates money. If you're in the business of providing scientific, engineering, or financial products or solutions, then software can be an asset. If you're in the business of making widgets, software is an expense.
It's not the software that is the asset, it's the business process. A winning business process can be developed and implemented using shrink-wrap software. Sure your competitor can buy the same software as you, but can they implement it the same way you do?
Professional oboe players cut their own reeds, because they can't get off the shelf reeds that will sound as good. They don't, however, make their own instruments. Their asset is their ability to produce beautiful music, not perfect reeds.
Successful craftsmen make their own tools, because they can't get off the shelf tools that do what they need. They don't, however, dig up their own iron ore. Their asset is their ability to build fine cabinets and tables, not home-made tools.
Profitable manufacturers configure their shrink-wrap ERP systems to meet their needs, often using only a small subset of available modules. They don't write their own ERP systems, they make widgets. Their asset is their configuration of that system, or, in other words, their business process, not a piece of software.
Large corporate development teams are on their way out. Ten years from now, the majority of programming done outside the software industry will be scripting, and not coding. Scripting is all about solving the problem while minimizing expenses, and that, my friend, is the asset.
Ha! I read that as cyber egging and memories of 2600's hacked page archive came back. I imagined a hacked Salon page photoshopped to look like it was egged.:-)
Or & nbsp ; (without the spaces of course). Explaining that would be interesting. Any such kludge is unacceptable given that such problems were solved years ago with CSS level 1!
it's a much slower, lower quality, harder to read, and more expensive way to do exactly the same thing.
Aack! What are you talking about? Inkjets are much cheaper to manufacture than line printers. They can also be much faster than line printers. Look at industrial applications such as mailing kit made by Pitney Bowes or Bell+Howell - everything is inkjet these days.
but I can't imagine how a washing machine could do the type of temperature control needed for making beer
Such washing machines heat their own water, unlike American machines, which take hot water from the house. With his computer control, he can keep the temperature elevated for several hours.
Yes! I personally would like to see such compulsory labelling. For example, I have the sneaking suspicion that the nice compact-flourescent bulbs I've been buying recently are made in polluting factories. I don't know this, but I do know that I used to pay $15 each for Phillips bulbs made in the EU, and now all I can find are $4 generic ones made in China. With such a device having a multi-year lifespan, I don't mind paying more for one made in a cleaner factory, even if the product is identical otherwise. But how to know?
I know there's the cost of the production of the album, the marketing, etc., but over 8 million copies, those costs are negligable.
The vast majority of albums do not sell eight million copies! In fact, in the last ten years only 2356 albums have gone "Multi-Platinum" - the designation for albums with more than two million sales.
I challenge someone to come up with the total number of album releases in the last ten years. A hint: it's a big number. Think orders of magnatude.
The worst part in Boston is that you *must* use the initial 1 if you dial "long distance" and you *can not* use the 1 if you are dialing locally
This is not necessarily true. I have a 617 area code (that's Boston) cellphone from t-mobile, and every number in my Nokia starts with a +. Local Boston numbers follow with a 1-617, numbers in other places might start with a 44, 48, or a 64.
It makes a lot of sense, I think, as I don't have to manually dial numbers when I'm bored out of my mind in a mile-long security queue changing planes in Amsterdam or London.
My arse it is, it's blackmail. They demand $5 for a faint suggestion that I might receive less junk mail if I fill in their stupid form.
The $5 is only to submit online. Just print the thing out and mail it in. Cost of a stamp today, $0.37.
As for the list being voluntary - it's observed by those who send more than 80% of the junk mail in the US. I know a little about the direct mail industry, having consulted for a mailing equipment manufacturer in the recent past.
Amusing that this do-not-mail list is maintained by the very group that is going to sue to stop the new do-not-call list.
Indeed it is - however, having used the mail preference service since 1998, I can say without reservation that it works, and is a good thing. I still get some junk from local businesses who don't subscribe to the DMA's lists, but it's on the order of three or four pieces a month.
The service is worth every penny I spent to get on it. (I think it was $0.32 for the stamp back then)
I have this urge to say "me too," if only to rile up those who remember Usenet from the early 90s...
Instead I'll try to add a little here. The Cyberiad is fantastic. It's hilarious. It had me laughing out loud on the train just like when I read Douglas Adams for the first time, but unlike Adams, Lem's wordplay remains interesting even after multiple visits. Really he is a truly brilliant man, and it shines through in the Cyberiad. Please read.:-)
California public schools spent $9,267.00 per student for the education of its kindergarten through high school. That's a LOT of money per kid (you can send your kid to a top flight private school for about half)
Half? Like $4600/year? In a church-funded private school, maybe. In a "top-flight private school," no, I don't think so.
A "top-flight private school" will have classes of 20 students each with a reasonably well-paid teacher. Such teachers command incomes of $60k/year. (By the way, that's the average [mean] salary for a public school teacher in the city of Boston, where I live) Benefits per teacher raise expenditures another $30k/year.
Suddenly you've just spent $4500 a year just to pay for the teachers. Now buy/rent/maintain a building, get some administrative staff, a nurse, a principal, buy some books ($300/student/year minimum), some computers, and while you're at it, someone to maintain the computers.
I think $9200/year per student is cheap. I certainly wouldn't send my child to a school that spent any less. And if that means I have to pay high property taxes to support education, it's fine by me. The better educated our children are, the less we'll spend on social services for them in the future.
StorageTek, the company that makes those nifty tape-backup robots, has a new product based on IDE RAID called "BladeStore" that should suit your needs.
I'm thinking wallpaper. Just jack the wallpaper into your computer, and load up iTunes, Geiss, Milkdrop, Quake III, RtCW...
Think about your audience here... were the typical/. reader to paper their room with such a screen, they would be loading something other than iTunes and jacking something other than their computer!
The LA Unified School district can't afford books for all its kids, but they just spent a million dollars to roll out fiber optic drops to one of the Junior High schools. As far as I know, they are wiring all the schools.
Hopefully expensive schoolbooks will be a thing of the past in the near future. See Open CourseWare for details. Sometimes things just need to be done differently.
By the time I have kids of school-age (maybe 2015?) I expect they won't be using printed texts for much besides reading literature.
I'm attempting to reverse "server proliferation" at my LFC* by moving to VMWare on IBM x440 hardware. As long as you have a service level agreement with your hosting provider that suits your needs, why should you insist on separate boxes? Separate instances on the same hardware should be enough.
My current hosting works this way - I have been using vservers/hostpro/Interland for the past four years and have not experienced any outages since a one-hour scheduled window for a network change in 2000. VMs (not virtual domains) are fine for the vast majority of sites out there.
*LFC - Large Faceless Corporation
Re:just like winmodems
on
IDE RAID Examined
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Using IDE Raid is like using a winmodem. Unlike with modems, where everyone has one, RAID has a basic educational entry point. I seriously doubt IDE Raid will ever overtake SCSI in any area where knowledgeable people are doing the administration.
To You, Unbeliever: In 1999 I set up a file server in a factory in Connecticut. I used a four-channel Adaptec card and four 76 GB IBM DeskStar disks to create a RAID 0+1. (they were the biggest IDE drives on the market at the time) The array lost one drive after a few months, which was replaced without incident. It has faithfully served a 50+ node network for almost four years now. And at the time, it cost that factory $2500 in hardware and 7 hours of labor, for a 150GB volume. This was less than 25% of the cost of the cheapest SCSI RAID.
SCSI raid is for those who don't keep up with the times, and find it easier to throw money at a problem than to actually find a good solution.
This research made some noise (ha!) about ten years ago. A company called Macrosonix holds the patents. Even NPR has covered this in the past ten years.
The best explanation of the technology I've seen is in "Fluid Power Journal."
Slashdot Mirror
First off, he's not talking about 3G. Not even close. If the Slashdot posting had said 2.5G, I'd have ignored it. I mean, I've been using GPRS in Boston on T-Mobile's network for over two years, and it's nothing to write about. He can't even read his email on his phone! Bah. I was using Outlook on my iPaq using a bluetooth connection to my GPRS enabled Nokia 6330i almost a year ago.
"Diesels DO get great mileage, but have a horrific emissions problems - everyone has been behind a pretty, old Mercedes coupe to just get choked by the fumes as it pulls away from the light."
You've obviously been mistaking the "TDI" badge on many new Volkswagens for a "GTI" badge as they fly by you on the road. Modern diesels do not have horrific emissions problems. In fact, while thier (invisible) particulate emissions are higher than gas engines, their N02 emissions (think acid rain) are actually lower than gas engines.
You must also consider the environmental impact of refining and transporting fuel. Any car that gets 45 mpg (US) is going to be better for the environment than one that gets 23 mpg, even if that 23 mpg is a LEV gas engine car with no particulate emissions. Remember, the oil you burn as gas is being shipped half-way around the world using diesel powered ships, then to refining, then to gas stations using diesel powered trucks.
I think not. Sure 1559 volunteers may be "promoting" IT in their roles, but there certainly are not 1559 Peace Corps volunteers working in IT. The vast majority of these people are English teachers who have a secondary project of trying to improve their school's computer lab, often using "creative grant-writing" techniques to appropriate funds marked for women's health or community development.
Until "IT" is a Peace Corps job category like Education, Agriculture, Health, and Environment, Peace Corps will not be taking IT seriously.
I speak from experience.
-JB (Volunteer - Poland 15, 1999-2000)
Let's hope this space elevator's fibers are a little more sturdy than the mast of Team NZ's yacht.
"AUCKLAND, New Zealand The meltdown of Team New Zealand, the America's Cup defender, continued on Friday when, on the third leg of Race 4 against the Swiss boat Alinghi, the Kiwis' mast exploded into a heap of carbon fiber shards."
(NYTimes)
Whodathunk that one day we'd be reading a story titled "Apple: ..." with an IBM icon? Maybe I'm getting old, but I think it's kinda cool.
When I pried the heatsink off my brand-new Power Macintosh 7100/66 (um, nine years ago?) I found a gleaming blue plate with IBM in big white letters on top. It's no biggie.
Really we should just come up with one icon for M$ and one for everyone else. (shall we call them the rebel alliance?)
We've just managed to squeeze 2k pro onto our old NT workstations (P166), and they chug along at an only-just-usable pace
A quick note on this. It's not the processing power that's important here, it's the memory. Find some surplus 72 pin simms and give each box 256 MB ram. The machines will be more than usable for Win2k and Office 2k. I have had much success with this formula using circa 1997 hardware. (AOpen motherboards and IBM/Cyrix 166 mhz chips)
I disagree with you about home-grown software being an asset.
At the end of the day, an asset is something that creates money. If you're in the business of providing scientific, engineering, or financial products or solutions, then software can be an asset. If you're in the business of making widgets, software is an expense.
It's not the software that is the asset, it's the business process. A winning business process can be developed and implemented using shrink-wrap software. Sure your competitor can buy the same software as you, but can they implement it the same way you do?
Professional oboe players cut their own reeds, because they can't get off the shelf reeds that will sound as good. They don't, however, make their own instruments. Their asset is their ability to produce beautiful music, not perfect reeds.
Successful craftsmen make their own tools, because they can't get off the shelf tools that do what they need. They don't, however, dig up their own iron ore. Their asset is their ability to build fine cabinets and tables, not home-made tools.
Profitable manufacturers configure their shrink-wrap ERP systems to meet their needs, often using only a small subset of available modules. They don't write their own ERP systems, they make widgets. Their asset is their configuration of that system, or, in other words, their business process, not a piece of software.
Large corporate development teams are on their way out. Ten years from now, the majority of programming done outside the software industry will be scripting, and not coding. Scripting is all about solving the problem while minimizing expenses, and that, my friend, is the asset.
Ha! I read that as cyber egging and memories of 2600's hacked page archive came back. I imagined a hacked Salon page photoshopped to look like it was egged. :-)
(Maybe I need a drink now?)
Or & nbsp ; (without the spaces of course). Explaining that would be interesting. Any such kludge is unacceptable given that such problems were solved years ago with CSS level 1!
it's a much slower, lower quality, harder to read, and more expensive way to do exactly the same thing.
Aack! What are you talking about? Inkjets are much cheaper to manufacture than line printers. They can also be much faster than line printers. Look at industrial applications such as mailing kit made by Pitney Bowes or Bell+Howell - everything is inkjet these days.
but I can't imagine how a washing machine could do the type of temperature control needed for making beer
Such washing machines heat their own water, unlike American machines, which take hot water from the house. With his computer control, he can keep the temperature elevated for several hours.
Would you really?
Yes! I personally would like to see such compulsory labelling. For example, I have the sneaking suspicion that the nice compact-flourescent bulbs I've been buying recently are made in polluting factories. I don't know this, but I do know that I used to pay $15 each for Phillips bulbs made in the EU, and now all I can find are $4 generic ones made in China. With such a device having a multi-year lifespan, I don't mind paying more for one made in a cleaner factory, even if the product is identical otherwise. But how to know?
I know there's the cost of the production of the album, the marketing, etc., but over 8 million copies, those costs are negligable.
The vast majority of albums do not sell eight million copies! In fact, in the last ten years only 2356 albums have gone "Multi-Platinum" - the designation for albums with more than two million sales.
I challenge someone to come up with the total number of album releases in the last ten years. A hint: it's a big number. Think orders of magnatude.
The worst part in Boston is that you *must* use the initial 1 if you dial "long distance" and you *can not* use the 1 if you are dialing locally
This is not necessarily true. I have a 617 area code (that's Boston) cellphone from t-mobile, and every number in my Nokia starts with a +. Local Boston numbers follow with a 1-617, numbers in other places might start with a 44, 48, or a 64.
It makes a lot of sense, I think, as I don't have to manually dial numbers when I'm bored out of my mind in a mile-long security queue changing planes in Amsterdam or London.
My arse it is, it's blackmail. They demand $5 for a faint suggestion that I might receive less junk mail if I fill in their stupid form.
The $5 is only to submit online. Just print the thing out and mail it in. Cost of a stamp today, $0.37.
As for the list being voluntary - it's observed by those who send more than 80% of the junk mail in the US. I know a little about the direct mail industry, having consulted for a mailing equipment manufacturer in the recent past.
Amusing that this do-not-mail list is maintained by the very group that is going to sue to stop the new do-not-call list.
Indeed it is - however, having used the mail preference service since 1998, I can say without reservation that it works, and is a good thing. I still get some junk from local businesses who don't subscribe to the DMA's lists, but it's on the order of three or four pieces a month.
The service is worth every penny I spent to get on it. (I think it was $0.32 for the stamp back then)
I have this urge to say "me too," if only to rile up those who remember Usenet from the early 90s...
:-)
Instead I'll try to add a little here. The Cyberiad is fantastic. It's hilarious. It had me laughing out loud on the train just like when I read Douglas Adams for the first time, but unlike Adams, Lem's wordplay remains interesting even after multiple visits. Really he is a truly brilliant man, and it shines through in the Cyberiad. Please read.
California public schools spent $9,267.00 per student for the education of its kindergarten through high school. That's a LOT of money per kid (you can send your kid to a top flight private school for about half)
Half? Like $4600/year? In a church-funded private school, maybe. In a "top-flight private school," no, I don't think so.
A "top-flight private school" will have classes of 20 students each with a reasonably well-paid teacher. Such teachers command incomes of $60k/year. (By the way, that's the average [mean] salary for a public school teacher in the city of Boston, where I live) Benefits per teacher raise expenditures another $30k/year.
Suddenly you've just spent $4500 a year just to pay for the teachers. Now buy/rent/maintain a building, get some administrative staff, a nurse, a principal, buy some books ($300/student/year minimum), some computers, and while you're at it, someone to maintain the computers.
I think $9200/year per student is cheap. I certainly wouldn't send my child to a school that spent any less. And if that means I have to pay high property taxes to support education, it's fine by me. The better educated our children are, the less we'll spend on social services for them in the future.
Eh? Well, the term RatBot had yet to appear in Slashdot... Google Slashdot for ratbot and see...
StorageTek, the company that makes those nifty tape-backup robots, has a new product based on IDE RAID called "BladeStore" that should suit your needs.
I'm thinking wallpaper. Just jack the wallpaper into your computer, and load up iTunes, Geiss, Milkdrop, Quake III, RtCW...
/. reader to paper their room with such a screen, they would be loading something other than iTunes and jacking something other than their computer!
Think about your audience here... were the typical
The LA Unified School district can't afford books for all its kids, but they just spent a million dollars to roll out fiber optic drops to one of the Junior High schools. As far as I know, they are wiring all the schools.
Hopefully expensive schoolbooks will be a thing of the past in the near future. See Open CourseWare for details. Sometimes things just need to be done differently.
By the time I have kids of school-age (maybe 2015?) I expect they won't be using printed texts for much besides reading literature.
I'm attempting to reverse "server proliferation" at my LFC* by moving to VMWare on IBM x440 hardware. As long as you have a service level agreement with your hosting provider that suits your needs, why should you insist on separate boxes? Separate instances on the same hardware should be enough.
My current hosting works this way - I have been using vservers/hostpro/Interland for the past four years and have not experienced any outages since a one-hour scheduled window for a network change in 2000. VMs (not virtual domains) are fine for the vast majority of sites out there.
*LFC - Large Faceless Corporation
Using IDE Raid is like using a winmodem. Unlike with modems, where everyone has one, RAID has a basic educational entry point. I seriously doubt IDE Raid will ever overtake SCSI in any area where knowledgeable people are doing the administration.
To You, Unbeliever: In 1999 I set up a file server in a factory in Connecticut. I used a four-channel Adaptec card and four 76 GB IBM DeskStar disks to create a RAID 0+1. (they were the biggest IDE drives on the market at the time) The array lost one drive after a few months, which was replaced without incident. It has faithfully served a 50+ node network for almost four years now. And at the time, it cost that factory $2500 in hardware and 7 hours of labor, for a 150GB volume. This was less than 25% of the cost of the cheapest SCSI RAID.
SCSI raid is for those who don't keep up with the times, and find it easier to throw money at a problem than to actually find a good solution.
Maybe you're one of these people?
This research made some noise (ha!) about ten years ago. A company called Macrosonix holds the patents. Even NPR has covered this in the past ten years.
The best explanation of the technology I've seen is in "Fluid Power Journal."