So far as I've seen, Telstra (as do most telcos) implore designers NOT to depend on the power over their network (for several reasons). I've not seen a SLA documents regarding telco power but I've seen plenty of "use power off our lines and we'll fine your arse" ones - hence it's a bit of a bad design in the first place for these security people to have relied on it as their fail-over (yes, I know there are some allowances regarding vampire-tapping the power).
They're likely worried about the power supplied by the telco on the copper pair - however any robber who has the brains to kill the house power probably knows to kill the POTS landline too.
If they (security people) are -really- worried then they'd have made sure that like most other systems they have their own battery-backup built in for just these sorts of situations ( not to mention the whole 3G/Wireless backups which would make more sense in order to eliminate the whole cut-wire silence issue ).
All in all, another pointless beat up by people who probably don't want their cozy world of routine changed (better put them with RIAA/MPAA etc).
Even contains MORE information like how it failed (in this case, something caused it to go into autorotation and basically didn't succeed with the landing).
And before all the tired and tedious "but, buts..." begin, remember:
No one has a right to free entertainment.
It's up to the writer whether or not she wants to give out free promotional samples, not her fans.
Sadly will you probably be modded to hell for this. It's true though but few people seem to understand why.
Same applies with software... heck, most things - If you write it, it's your personal choice how you distribute/licence it. Many people who want your stuff seem to have a notion that they have a right to tell you how to give it to them.
For eBooks, I agree, they're on murky ground. I suppose the 'trick' they're going to use is to make it rather troublesome for people to add independently-purchased eBooks to their readers (or just reject them outright). Convenience does tend to win out over cost so long as the cost difference isn't too severe.
Still, the glimmer of hope is that someone will produce an eBook reader that works well enough and isn't encumbered and is priced right.
(for printing, a publisher is becoming somewhat less relevant as well, as you say, editors, proof readers, publicists, yep, you need those - but with LSI/Lulu and similar along with internet sales they're becoming profoundly less relevant... finally!)
See, this is precisely the stuff that's been making me gnaw on my brain the last few weeks and even tried in "Ask Slashdot" (I think I need to reform my questions though to be fair).
Anyhow, the topic is up... there's many options out there to chase for going into eBooks but it seems that short of a plain PDF someone-somewhere is going to be done over a log. I don't want my readers being harassed by adverts or additionally even have the reseller (Amazon etc) modifying the text.
Maybe the reason why I've not been able to get clear answers thus far is that because this is simply too new a market for anything to have been determined well enough.
I'd love to offer the book through as many channels as possible - so do I just let the resellers "do as they please" and when readers moan I point the finger back and say "Wasn't me!" (or if the DRM goes to hell and everyone loses access).
Happy to hear some insights and guidance... please.
What would be a real good story is something like "How to write the perfect story to pull/. traffic to your site". The last couple of years things have been going pear-shaped with the story selections consisting more and more blatent meta-stories rather than direct linking (or stories which have less legitimate content than the summary!).
I agree with your sentiment. Most people aren't seeking to explicitly get rich or skyrocket to fame - most are just trying to make a living.
There's enough market space outside of the direct reach of the traditional bricks-and-mortar realm to make a living in and as you say it's something that is doable with only a couple of people on hand.
There's a base level of duplication/piracy/etc that's considered normal and acceptable, printed media tends to raise the bar enough to make it a non-issue (especially on a new novelist situation - and when you're really famous then it's still not a big problem as you'll be pulling in more than ample sales).
The weakpoint that I'm chewing on is the release of eBook versions, it's just so much easier to clone. Of course, the upside is the potential of viral popularity, assuming the work is good. One could throw all caution into the wind and just use the PDF method and then periodically chase down any major offenders (but that means involving lawyers which is probably more expensive than the artificial losses). If it was my own personal work, I'd probably take a chance at it.
Yep, it's frequently the mentality, until they get to the point in their lives where they actually get turfed out of the basement and find they need to make a basic living off their creative works.... then suddenly the see the need to actually make money and protect their investment.
For the last 15 years I've produced OpenSource software (some of which is used extensively for email systems) but I do have my commercial products to ensure the lights stay on and there's food in the cupboards.
As a person who's breaking into the book market with my wife's new novel and seeking an eBook option, this is precisely the sort of crap that we're worried about, just all too easy through modern POD portals like Lulu.
The only reason why we had those cash reserves is because the previous govt cashed in assests and didn't spend a lot... we've got the situation where infrastructure lagged and we (tax payers) lost major assets for short term artificial gains.
I think this was exceptional forward-planning by the Lib/Nat party, probably realising they were going to be likely ousted they set about a strategy that would ensure that the subsequent government would be in a less than envious position of playing (infrastructure) catch up and providing a delicious negative-media storm at the end of the day "oooh, they destroyed our surplus". Money that doesn't move/work is useless money.
I do not envy the Labor party right now - short of putting Gillard into the head position as a distraction I'm not sure how they're going to retain their seats. For their first term I felt they did fairly acceptable in the face of the global situation. I'm no fan of Abbott - just doesn't seem like PM material - good guy perhaps at the family BBQ but not as the head of the nation, makes me think of Zuma in ZA.
We're seeing the same thing starting around here in subtle ways. Our neighbour uses various things to cull the 'weeds' (grass damnit!) on his farm plot, however every season the tough stuff comes back faster (thorns, prickles, even Parthenium now is coming back) and he's spraying more frequently to try compensate. What's more annoying is that we're trying to run an organic system here and his washoff and overspray tends to drift into our property, causing our natural grasses to die back a fair distance into our property as well as tainting the orchard crop closest to the boundary.
All that's happened with agriculture is that we've traded the future for short term gains. Time to put away the toxic stuff and start living with less than perfect harvests, at least it's better than -no- harvest (also, stop trying to grow stuff where it really doesn't belong damnit!)
The external power pack just typically delivers one voltage (12~19V typ) into the laptop (there are some designs that feed in multiple but I wont' go there), from there the laptop will then DC-DC convert to various required levels for the components around the system (0.7~1.8, 3.3, 5, 12V etc), when that fails it's mostly game over unless it's something horridly obvious like a ruptured electrolyte or a vaporised flyback diode... sadly the reality is that it probably took out a few other things too and is destined for the junkpile.
I'm the creator/developer/maintainer of a lot of OpenSource projects and sometimes you just can't seem to keep up or you find that life outside of OpenSource keeps dragging you away from getting around to applying patches.
To be fair a lot of the patches I receive are very minor and could be applied in seconds as well as verified but then there's also the whole update announcements process and all the documentation changes too. After a while you find you get to spend a couple of hours every 3 months on a project where you cobble together all the patches, sort out the docs and lump-release it. Yes, it's a bad way of doing things but often when the code is a decade old there's not a lot of compelling drive behind maintaining things at a prompt rate....especially when you're already scratching to keep up with all the bills and other "real life" things (partners, cars, social comittments blah blah blah).
Anyhow, don't take it personally, just send another message periodically and eventually the maintainer will either snap or something. . ..a lot of us simply forget, yes, it's as simple as... now where did I put my coffee?:)
8 bit will never be on the 'way out'. It's just too convenient for most tasks and all that happens is that the price just keeps getting pushed down. If there's spare die space due to process shrinkage (hah!) they can always cram in another timer or such to make the whole device more appealing.
> Linux has no chance on the desktop until the basic UI gets professionally done.
I hear this a lot in varying degrees, it is false. If "no chance" means that my family, extended family and their friends have moved to Ubuntu from XP by choice after seeing someone else with it, then I think "no chance" is doing well. There's a lot of glitches and things yet to be worked out, there always is and you cannot control the degree of professionalism with a lot of apps any more than you can with Windows apps ( and Windows, for as god awful as it is seems to be technically, is doing very well on the desktop - until they fix up their kernel it has no chance on the desktop ).
I'll change your quote to "no chance on my desktop".
Sad that "CS" has become poisoned at a lot of centres and is no longer about the science and has become more of a code-monkey training program. I was searching in vain for a while there in the replies hoping to see if someone else would point out the distinction and glad to see that you did:)
I for one did my CS back in 1990 and the non-programming bits have long since proved their worth (algorithms & complexity being one of the most useful of all).
Slashdot Mirror
So far as I've seen, Telstra (as do most telcos) implore designers NOT to depend on the power over their network (for several reasons). I've not seen a SLA documents regarding telco power but I've seen plenty of "use power off our lines and we'll fine your arse" ones - hence it's a bit of a bad design in the first place for these security people to have relied on it as their fail-over (yes, I know there are some allowances regarding vampire-tapping the power).
Thanks (sincerely), that was a nice one - worth reading indeed.
Did you include Bob Katter in that? He lives about 10km from here :|
They're likely worried about the power supplied by the telco on the copper pair - however any robber who has the brains to kill the house power probably knows to kill the POTS landline too.
If they (security people) are -really- worried then they'd have made sure that like most other systems they have their own battery-backup built in for just these sorts of situations ( not to mention the whole 3G/Wireless backups which would make more sense in order to eliminate the whole cut-wire silence issue ).
All in all, another pointless beat up by people who probably don't want their cozy world of routine changed (better put them with RIAA/MPAA etc).
Why don't the editors just link to the original source rather than sending bucketloads of traffic to these sites?
http://www.flightglobal.com/articles/2010/09/10/347201/a160-hummingbird-crashes-during-testing-in-belize.html
Even contains MORE information like how it failed (in this case, something caused it to go into autorotation and basically didn't succeed with the landing).
Only on Slashdot would that be moderated as "insightful/interesting" as opposed to "funny".
And before all the tired and tedious "but, buts..." begin, remember:
No one has a right to free entertainment.
It's up to the writer whether or not she wants to give out free promotional samples, not her fans.
Sadly will you probably be modded to hell for this. It's true though but few people seem to understand why.
Same applies with software... heck, most things - If you write it, it's your personal choice how you distribute/licence it. Many people who want your stuff seem to have a notion that they have a right to tell you how to give it to them.
Thanks for that. I did look at the ePub format previously, it's one that is sitting in the 'preferred option' pile.
For eBooks, I agree, they're on murky ground. I suppose the 'trick' they're going to use is to make it rather troublesome for people to add independently-purchased eBooks to their readers (or just reject them outright). Convenience does tend to win out over cost so long as the cost difference isn't too severe.
Still, the glimmer of hope is that someone will produce an eBook reader that works well enough and isn't encumbered and is priced right.
(for printing, a publisher is becoming somewhat less relevant as well, as you say, editors, proof readers, publicists, yep, you need those - but with LSI/Lulu and similar along with internet sales they're becoming profoundly less relevant... finally!)
See, this is precisely the stuff that's been making me gnaw on my brain the last few weeks and even tried in "Ask Slashdot" (I think I need to reform my questions though to be fair).
Anyhow, the topic is up... there's many options out there to chase for going into eBooks but it seems that short of a plain PDF someone-somewhere is going to be done over a log. I don't want my readers being harassed by adverts or additionally even have the reseller (Amazon etc) modifying the text.
Maybe the reason why I've not been able to get clear answers thus far is that because this is simply too new a market for anything to have been determined well enough.
I'd love to offer the book through as many channels as possible - so do I just let the resellers "do as they please" and when readers moan I point the finger back and say "Wasn't me!" (or if the DRM goes to hell and everyone loses access).
Happy to hear some insights and guidance... please.
What would be a real good story is something like "How to write the perfect story to pull /. traffic to your site". The last couple of years things have been going pear-shaped with the story selections consisting more and more blatent meta-stories rather than direct linking (or stories which have less legitimate content than the summary!).
Bah!
I agree with your sentiment. Most people aren't seeking to explicitly get rich or skyrocket to fame - most are just trying to make a living.
There's enough market space outside of the direct reach of the traditional bricks-and-mortar realm to make a living in and as you say it's something that is doable with only a couple of people on hand.
There's a base level of duplication/piracy/etc that's considered normal and acceptable, printed media tends to raise the bar enough to make it a non-issue (especially on a new novelist situation - and when you're really famous then it's still not a big problem as you'll be pulling in more than ample sales).
The weakpoint that I'm chewing on is the release of eBook versions, it's just so much easier to clone. Of course, the upside is the potential of viral popularity, assuming the work is good. One could throw all caution into the wind and just use the PDF method and then periodically chase down any major offenders (but that means involving lawyers which is probably more expensive than the artificial losses). If it was my own personal work, I'd probably take a chance at it.
Yep, it's frequently the mentality, until they get to the point in their lives where they actually get turfed out of the basement and find they need to make a basic living off their creative works.... then suddenly the see the need to actually make money and protect their investment.
For the last 15 years I've produced OpenSource software (some of which is used extensively for email systems) but I do have my commercial products to ensure the lights stay on and there's food in the cupboards.
As a person who's breaking into the book market with my wife's new novel and seeking an eBook option, this is precisely the sort of crap that we're worried about, just all too easy through modern POD portals like Lulu.
The only reason why we had those cash reserves is because the previous govt cashed in assests and didn't spend a lot... we've got the situation where infrastructure lagged and we (tax payers) lost major assets for short term artificial gains.
I think this was exceptional forward-planning by the Lib/Nat party, probably realising they were going to be likely ousted they set about a strategy that would ensure that the subsequent government would be in a less than envious position of playing (infrastructure) catch up and providing a delicious negative-media storm at the end of the day "oooh, they destroyed our surplus". Money that doesn't move/work is useless money.
I do not envy the Labor party right now - short of putting Gillard into the head position as a distraction I'm not sure how they're going to retain their seats. For their first term I felt they did fairly acceptable in the face of the global situation. I'm no fan of Abbott - just doesn't seem like PM material - good guy perhaps at the family BBQ but not as the head of the nation, makes me think of Zuma in ZA.
We're seeing the same thing starting around here in subtle ways. Our neighbour uses various things to cull the 'weeds' (grass damnit!) on his farm plot, however every season the tough stuff comes back faster (thorns, prickles, even Parthenium now is coming back) and he's spraying more frequently to try compensate. What's more annoying is that we're trying to run an organic system here and his washoff and overspray tends to drift into our property, causing our natural grasses to die back a fair distance into our property as well as tainting the orchard crop closest to the boundary.
All that's happened with agriculture is that we've traded the future for short term gains. Time to put away the toxic stuff and start living with less than perfect harvests, at least it's better than -no- harvest (also, stop trying to grow stuff where it really doesn't belong damnit!)
Re the power supply - sort of yes/no.
The external power pack just typically delivers one voltage (12~19V typ) into the laptop (there are some designs that feed in multiple but I wont' go there), from there the laptop will then DC-DC convert to various required levels for the components around the system (0.7~1.8, 3.3, 5, 12V etc), when that fails it's mostly game over unless it's something horridly obvious like a ruptured electrolyte or a vaporised flyback diode... sadly the reality is that it probably took out a few other things too and is destined for the junkpile.
Actually, google adverts can be either CPC or CPI (usually per 1000 impressions). As the advertiser you get to choose which method you want.
I'm the creator/developer/maintainer of a lot of OpenSource projects and sometimes you just can't seem to keep up or you find that life outside of OpenSource keeps dragging you away from getting around to applying patches.
To be fair a lot of the patches I receive are very minor and could be applied in seconds as well as verified but then there's also the whole update announcements process and all the documentation changes too. After a while you find you get to spend a couple of hours every 3 months on a project where you cobble together all the patches, sort out the docs and lump-release it. Yes, it's a bad way of doing things but often when the code is a decade old there's not a lot of compelling drive behind maintaining things at a prompt rate... .especially when you're already scratching to keep up with all the bills and other "real life" things (partners, cars, social comittments blah blah blah).
Anyhow, don't take it personally, just send another message periodically and eventually the maintainer will either snap or something. . . .a lot of us simply forget, yes, it's as simple as... now where did I put my coffee? :)
8 bit will never be on the 'way out'. It's just too convenient for most tasks and all that happens is that the price just keeps getting pushed down. If there's spare die space due to process shrinkage (hah!) they can always cram in another timer or such to make the whole device more appealing.
> Linux has no chance on the desktop until the basic UI gets professionally done.
I hear this a lot in varying degrees, it is false. If "no chance" means that my family, extended family and their friends have moved to Ubuntu from XP by choice after seeing someone else with it, then I think "no chance" is doing well. There's a lot of glitches and things yet to be worked out, there always is and you cannot control the degree of professionalism with a lot of apps any more than you can with Windows apps ( and Windows, for as god awful as it is seems to be technically, is doing very well on the desktop - until they fix up their kernel it has no chance on the desktop ).
I'll change your quote to "no chance on my desktop".
The one you're thinking of perhaps is the IBM Model "M" keyboard with buckling-spring keys.
Typing this one one of them... and my wife is churning out her next novel on another, there's just no replacing these beasts :)
Sad that "CS" has become poisoned at a lot of centres and is no longer about the science and has become more of a code-monkey training program. I was searching in vain for a while there in the replies hoping to see if someone else would point out the distinction and glad to see that you did :)
I for one did my CS back in 1990 and the non-programming bits have long since proved their worth (algorithms & complexity being one of the most useful of all).
PLD.
Ultracaps still exhibit leaky, just obviously not as bad as things like standard electrolytes.
A lithium-ion polymer battery will retain its charge for longer than an ultracap (60~80% of charge after 12 months vs 25% of an ultracap).
As for the switches, they probably use a magnet + reed-switch, simple, effective and zero standby losses :)