On site spares. Make sure you have (tested and shown to be working) spares for everything, and more than one for critical components and ones that are more likely to fail while you are restocking your spares. Engineers are easier to fly around than kit. Yes, it is expensive, and yes, it's a pain to have to store and keep track of the spares inventory (which always seems to 'go walkies'), but if you have a demanding SLA, it's the only way to go.
T-Mobile bought what was Mercury One-2-One when the parent company of Mercury (Cable & Wireless) needed cash when the telecomms bubble burst.
At launch, the One-2-One service offered free SMS 24x7 and free (local) phone calls evenings and weekends. It was only later that the mobile operators realised they could monetise SMS, and prices rose. I think one tariff even offered free local phone calls 24 x 7 and there was a thriving market in re-selling subscriptions without changing the name of the subscriber to keep this tariff going so taxi-firms would equip their drivers with a One-2-One phone instead of a radio, others would use them as baby monitors and so on.
As the grandfather post points out, the marginal cost of an SMS is vanishingly small - charging non-trivial amounts for them is a great way of making almost pure profit.
The expectation when the One-2-One service was launched was that the eventual subscriber model would be that you paid a fixed sum each month for 'all you could eat'. That has turned out not to be the case, unfortunately - and it looks like the net neutrality issues in the US will make Internet access go the same way - there's *big* pressure to monetise the Internet.
Note that some tariffs nowadays do operate an almost 'all-you-can-eat' model - but you pay big bucks for them, so the profit margins for the telcos remain nicely high.
Oh, and just like Yahoo Groups, email addresses are 'hidden' - you have to have a Google groups ID to view poster's email addresses - not only in the Yahoo Groups lookalike, but also in the Usenet Archive. I find this extremely irritating.
Apparently there is no search by author (of Usenet posting) either.
Might be a good idea to keep a list of 'improvements' that we can lament.
Weell, it's awful to the geeky nerds (like me) who appreciated the compendium of Usenet posts. Face it, we're not in the majority.
I guess Google is looking at the 'success' of Yahoo Groups, and needs an equivalent to bring free spending eyeballs to advertisers. Someone had the 'inspired' idea of conflating a Yahoo Groups type structure with their existing Usenet archive. Personally, I'd like to take whoever that was (and the manager that approved it) out and slap them about the face with a wet fish. Usenet is OPEN and non-proprietary. [Google|Yahoo] Groups is closed, doesn't share info entered, and proprietary.
Google were heros for resurrecting Deja's information - this is an extreme retrograde step.
Perhaps this will push a Wiki style project to do a Usenet archive? Difficult and expensive (and the wrong license), but I would imagine a lot of people are thinking the same thing. Hmmm - what if Bill Gates funded it - wouldn't that make our collective heads explode!
It has been calculated that London water has passed through an average of seven sets of kidneys before it is drunk, because of the development of water distribution and sewerage systems on the Thames both in London and upstream of London.
So Singapore isn't first.
Essentially, someone in Reading drinks a glass of water, and processes it naturally. The sewage outfall disperses the (treated) wastewater into the Thames, where it is re-abstracted further downstream (say Maidenhead) and the cycle goes round again. Eventually the water gets to London.
Obviously, not all the glassful will have been through someone elses kidneys, as the Thames isn't dry between water abstraction points and sewage outfalls, but the principle applies.
If you want to drink water that doesn't have at least some quantity that has gone through somebody (or something) else's kidneys, drink melted deep Greenlandic (or Antarctic) glacier ice, or water from (very) old aquifers.
Every breath you take has some air molecules in common with Julius Caesar's last breath (bar pathological exceptions). You probably drink some of his natural liquid output every time you drink as well. Ain't life wonderful!
You'll have learn how to type with a Braille keyboard (6 keys), and there's no screen (obviously). You will need some other machine to upload to periodically.
Some PDAs have been produced with chording keyboards - I owned one (briefly) once.
In common with others in this thread, I can't recommend Psion Series 3 or Series 5 too highly. My 5MX is in daily use - so get one off an auction site.
...which is not unusual on Slashdot - I do it all the time as well.
The idea of randomising answers it not new. It has been used in 'socially sensitive' surveys for years, if not decades.
Simple explanation: Have a survey of 10 questions people don't like to reveal the truth of, ech with a yes/no answer.
For each question, either a) reply truthfully b) flip a coin and record whatever the coin gives.
If challenged about your answer, you can always say that's the answer the coin required.
Analyse the results for a large population of completed survays. Any significant deviation from 50% yes and 50% no answers tells you which way the population answered, without revealing who actually holds those views.
All you need is a coin to randomise your answers. This is independent of any web form, doctored answer sheet etc etc - so particular answers cannot be pinned on you.
It's fun administering the same survey to people with and without the randomisation - you get to see what people in general lie about!
Let's apply some government moderated capitalism here.
Copyrights are obviously valuable, otherwise corporations would not be prepared to spend so much defending them. However, they cost nothing to create. The government is missing an obvious source of revenue here - simply tax the ownership of a published copyrighted work that is itself sold. If you don't pay the tax, it becomes public domain. Copyrights for free items would be free of this tax.
To add spice, double the tax each year the copyright runs. For example:
Tax in year 1 - 1 cent Tax in year 2 - 2 cents Tax in year 3 - 4 cents ...you know where this is going.
An up-front fee (or pre-payment of tax) of $10.23 protects your copyright for 10 years.
An up front fee of $327.67 preserves your copyright for 15 years.
But you can see that after 25 years, the next fee is $335,544.32 - you need a serious income to preserve the copyright. If you don't pay, it becomes public domain.
You get the opportunity to profit. The government gets a revenue stream, and items become public domain after a reasonable time.
Obviously, the starting point and the exponential could be varied, but explaining it with a pile of pennies and a chessboard - move one square per year and double the number of pennies - keeps it simple. The fees in the early years are very reasonable, encouraging people to profit from their work quickly.
Slashdot Mirror
On site spares. Make sure you have (tested and shown to be working) spares for everything, and more than one for critical components and ones that are more likely to fail while you are restocking your spares. Engineers are easier to fly around than kit. Yes, it is expensive, and yes, it's a pain to have to store and keep track of the spares inventory (which always seems to 'go walkies'), but if you have a demanding SLA, it's the only way to go.
T-Mobile bought what was Mercury One-2-One when the parent company of Mercury (Cable & Wireless) needed cash when the telecomms bubble burst.
At launch, the One-2-One service offered free SMS 24x7 and free (local) phone calls evenings and weekends. It was only later that the mobile operators realised they could monetise SMS, and prices rose. I think one tariff even offered free local phone calls 24 x 7 and there was a thriving market in re-selling subscriptions without changing the name of the subscriber to keep this tariff going so taxi-firms would equip their drivers with a One-2-One phone instead of a radio, others would use them as baby monitors and so on.
As the grandfather post points out, the marginal cost of an SMS is vanishingly small - charging non-trivial amounts for them is a great way of making almost pure profit.
The expectation when the One-2-One service was launched was that the eventual subscriber model would be that you paid a fixed sum each month for 'all you could eat'. That has turned out not to be the case, unfortunately - and it looks like the net neutrality issues in the US will make Internet access go the same way - there's *big* pressure to monetise the Internet.
Note that some tariffs nowadays do operate an almost 'all-you-can-eat' model - but you pay big bucks for them, so the profit margins for the telcos remain nicely high.
Oh, and just like Yahoo Groups, email addresses are 'hidden' - you have to have a Google groups ID to view poster's email addresses - not only in the Yahoo Groups lookalike, but also in the Usenet Archive. I find this extremely irritating.
Apparently there is no search by author (of Usenet posting) either.
Might be a good idea to keep a list of 'improvements' that we can lament.
Weell, it's awful to the geeky nerds (like me) who appreciated the compendium of Usenet posts. Face it, we're not in the majority.
I guess Google is looking at the 'success' of Yahoo Groups, and needs an equivalent to bring free spending eyeballs to advertisers. Someone had the 'inspired' idea of conflating a Yahoo Groups type structure with their existing Usenet archive. Personally, I'd like to take whoever that was (and the manager that approved it) out and slap them about the face with a wet fish. Usenet is OPEN and non-proprietary. [Google|Yahoo] Groups is closed, doesn't share info entered, and proprietary.
Google were heros for resurrecting Deja's information - this is an extreme retrograde step.
Perhaps this will push a Wiki style project to do a Usenet archive? Difficult and expensive (and the wrong license), but I would imagine a lot of people are thinking the same thing. Hmmm - what if Bill Gates funded it - wouldn't that make our collective heads explode!
It has been calculated that London water has passed through an average of seven sets of kidneys before it is drunk, because of the development of water distribution and sewerage systems on the Thames both in London and upstream of London.
So Singapore isn't first.
Essentially, someone in Reading drinks a glass of water, and processes it naturally. The sewage outfall disperses the (treated) wastewater into the Thames, where it is re-abstracted further downstream (say Maidenhead) and the cycle goes round again. Eventually the water gets to London.
Obviously, not all the glassful will have been through someone elses kidneys, as the Thames isn't dry between water abstraction points and sewage outfalls, but the principle applies.
If you want to drink water that doesn't have at least some quantity that has gone through somebody (or something) else's kidneys, drink melted deep Greenlandic (or Antarctic) glacier ice, or water from (very) old aquifers.
Every breath you take has some air molecules in common with Julius Caesar's last breath (bar pathological exceptions). You probably drink some of his natural liquid output every time you drink as well. Ain't life wonderful!
http://www.nkl.fi/memona/memoengl.htm
You'll have learn how to type with a Braille keyboard (6 keys), and there's no screen (obviously). You will need some other machine to upload to periodically.
Some PDAs have been produced with chording keyboards - I owned one (briefly) once.
In common with others in this thread, I can't recommend Psion Series 3 or Series 5 too highly. My 5MX is in daily use - so get one off an auction site.
...which is not unusual on Slashdot - I do it all the time as well.
The idea of randomising answers it not new. It has been used in 'socially sensitive' surveys for years, if not decades.
Simple explanation:
Have a survey of 10 questions people don't like to reveal the truth of, ech with a yes/no answer.
For each question, either
a) reply truthfully
b) flip a coin and record whatever the coin gives.
If challenged about your answer, you can always say that's the answer the coin required.
Analyse the results for a large population of completed survays. Any significant deviation from 50% yes and 50% no answers tells you which way the population answered, without revealing who actually holds those views.
All you need is a coin to randomise your answers. This is independent of any web form, doctored answer sheet etc etc - so particular answers cannot be pinned on you.
It's fun administering the same survey to people with and without the randomisation - you get to see what people in general lie about!
Hope this gives a usefule summary of the method.
Regards,
pgrb
Let's apply some government moderated capitalism here.
Copyrights are obviously valuable, otherwise corporations would not be prepared to spend so much defending them. However, they cost nothing to create. The government is missing an obvious source of revenue here - simply tax the ownership of a published copyrighted work that is itself sold. If you don't pay the tax, it becomes public domain. Copyrights for free items would be free of this tax.
To add spice, double the tax each year the copyright runs. For example:
Tax in year 1 - 1 cent
Tax in year 2 - 2 cents
Tax in year 3 - 4 cents
...you know where this is going.
An up-front fee (or pre-payment of tax) of $10.23 protects your copyright for 10 years.
An up front fee of $327.67 preserves your copyright for 15 years.
But you can see that after 25 years, the next fee is $335,544.32 - you need a serious income to preserve the copyright. If you don't pay, it becomes public domain.
You get the opportunity to profit. The government gets a revenue stream, and items become public domain after a reasonable time.
Obviously, the starting point and the exponential could be varied, but explaining it with a pile of pennies and a chessboard - move one square per year and double the number of pennies - keeps it simple. The fees in the early years are very reasonable, encouraging people to profit from their work quickly.
Problems?