It seems to me everyone is bitching about the wrong problem. Why is it the cable companies are unable to recoup their costs for their high bandwidth users? They are able to supply their users with big enough pipes at low cost. Their bandwith is cheap. Isn't it?
The problem is the Teco's. Cable providers in many cases, if not almost all, need to purchase their upstream bandwidth infrastructure from a phone company. Where bandwidth costs have gone through the floor for things like cable modems, etc, they have not moved one iota for the old copper T(X) lines. I don't work for a cable company, but we have had to pay a local techo a crapload of money, and wait months for an install to get a 10 foot T1 connection to our ISP. Why don't you just run direct for that 10 feet you ask? Good question! Contracts. Our ISP _MUST_ use the telco for all T1 type connection in our situation, whether it makes sense or not. It's in their contract with the telco. It was one thing they needed to do in order to get favorable terms for the hundreds of "real" T1's our ISP has from the telco.
Cable companies have two ends in their layer 1 supply chain, the consumer end and the phone company end. The consumer end is dirt cheap, thanks to the use of modern technologies and system upgrades. The phone company end still has a guy out in front of the building where I work trying to figure out which of 1000 something wires coming out of a copper bundle is supposed to be connected where. I've got news for you, the guy connecting the copper is not the most cost effective use of modern technology.
Some major changes need to happen in the infrastructure supply side of things. Until this happens, the consumers and cable companies are going to be "stressed."
I always have someone else click "accept" for me anyway. That way I don't have to agree to the terms. Shared machines are even better, chances are you don't even know the person who clicked accept.
One +2 posting, and the site is already slashdotted...wow.
Needless to say, I have not read the review, but the battery life on this sucker must be horrible! Either that, or you wear around a battery on your belt.
The features mentioned in the slashdot summary sound great, but I don't believe current battery technology can power such a package for any reasonable amount of time. I may be wrong, as I said, I havn't read the review, but I bet battery is what will make this unit suck.
See the subject. Yes, a Mustang has crap speakers. Not all cars do. My previous BOSE equiped Maxima sounded at times like it had a small sub. My current Acura 3.2 TL has speakers which can give a full rich spectrum of sound, although you can only really tell my listening to classical music which I don't do much of.
I am not in the market for one of these right now, but if I were, it would be a hard decision. Based on the business models and actions of the two companies, I would prefer to be giving my monthly usage fee to Sirius. I don't like the XM's idea of almost no, if any commercial free stations. They seem too money hungry. For example, they only have two satalites up there. Sirius has three, which offers them some redundancy if one craps out on them.
Sirius to me seems to be the more professional of the two, where XM seem to be the "Clear Channels version" of the two. That is how I have always thought of them, which is interesting since this is my first finding out Clear Channels is a part owner.
I wouldn't give my money to XM if I have a viable choice. Remember, XM has had a head start as well, give Sirius a little time to get underway, then we can do a more fair comparison.
I seems every couple of months one of these "new storage breakthrough" comes along. What happens to them? Where do they go? It seems like these things have yet to make it into consumer (or even "professional") technology. Have heard a lot about high density solid state storage, and stuff like that, yet I still have a platter spinning at 7200RPM next to my feet. Arn't we a little outdated by other technology standards using spinning pieces of metal to store our information, with no end in sight?
These things are cool, but they become science breakthroughs, not news for nerds...stuff that matters? Do breakthroughs like this really matter to us? I am asking this because I really don't know. Where have semi-recent "Breakthroughs" like this made it into consumer technology that you and I can buy today? Or next year?
Is this the real reason the green screeners at work claim the AS/400 is so secure? And all along I thought is was because there were only, I don't know, maybe 2 on the internet not behind massive firewalls!
For example, we struggled with sites that use a technology called positioning to put ads on their pages. In IE, those ads temporarily hide part of the page, then go away. But in our Mozilla tests, the ads sometimes permanently blocked part of the page, and we had to reload the page until we got a different, regular, nonpositioning ad.
------ The problem is not the browser...but the ad. When will these people wake up? Did you catch that TWO of their few complains centered around use of ads, or features to stop ads? When you turn pop-ups off, it may disable some aspects of cnet.com (news.com?) that you really want to use. Hehe...yeah.
The ads causing a page to be non-function is a good reason to a) stop using the site and b) send the webmaster a poltite message telling them why you will never visit their site again.
The department I work in is trying to put a bunch of "local level" government offices on the Internet. We need broadband speed connections from their offices to our data center. Getting some type of broadband installed in many of these places is absolutely horrible.
In many of these places, there is just no way to send a 50MB file once a day in a cost effective manor. We just had Iowa telecom decide not to offer flat rate ISDN to us because it would be to expensive for them. This was when we called them a week after the promised install date to see why it wasn't installed! It took us MONTHS to get to this point. Would have been nice if they had a couple months ago (before quoting us a price and delivery time) told us they wouldn't do it. We have promised our customer a price and delivery date (which is now well passed.) Iowa Telecom (or whatever their name is) has now offered us a price for ISDN which is more than our promised total price to the customer.
It is hard to believe phone companies can get away with this type of service, or lack thereof. We have now starting selling the service with a bring your own internet access spin. We have missed deadline after deadline due to the fact we cannot get tcp/ip access to these offices at reasonable prices, at the delivery time we are told. We are a "full service" provider, but there is no way we can deal with this crap. I'm sure we are not alone.
"Hey guys, you know how lots of big servers die when we link to them? I just approved a submition with a link to a webserver running on a hand held! I got a stop watch...want take bets on the number of seconds it lasts? Better hurry!"
Come on timothy. How stupid is it to post to slashdot a link like this!?
It will be interesting in the coming years to see how China evolves from their current state. The article talks about a man who was put in jail for a few years (a concrete cell as they describe it) for having a web site with a forum where people were talking about democracy and such. It is really very said, coming from a country which strongly supports people's rights to criticize, to see a person be put away for having a venue for free speech in the real true meaning of the term.
The section about the mine collapse was interesting as well. For those who didn't read the article, there was a mine collapse killing 81 people the "the government" did not want publicized, to the point of threatening journalists. It was released on a web site, and before long, mainstream journalists started picking the story up as well. This is really a revolutionary thing in a country where the press has historically been 100% controlled.
The public being informed is a major step in a country progressing into a "modern free government." Imagine the economic powerhouse they county may be able to transform itself into if more power and rights are given to the people.
-- quote According to the article the FAA invoked their "emergency powers" to force the new system in place in Syracuse against the inspectors and certifiers' recomendations. This sounds like a horrible mess waiting to happen. --
Well, I work in a building right in line with the SYR main runway. I can tell how lined up a plane is by what section of the parking lot they fly over (we are talking a 20 car lot.) The planes are so close I can see which ones need to be repainted or washed.
So far...I'm still alive, that's a good sign. Also, recently I have seen some planes lining up with the runway much closer than before, I wonder if that means the controllers can handle the traffic better? That would be a good sign for if the system as a whole if it is rolled out in other places.
Anyway, when the system in SYR has problems, I'll be either the first...or last...to notify slashdot.
At about $70 (Game Boy Advanced, Amazon price), you can create custom games, ports of other things, etc. This sounds to me like a much more practical thing to purchase to play around with the the PS2, which is in at least the $500 range to start hacking your own stuff for.
It would be interesting to know how many people will create practical, non-game applications. I know there are many non-game attachments, like a TV tuner and digital camera available for the unit.
I may actually get one of these myself to hack around with. The "other half" says I shouldn't waste money on the PS2, cuz I will may write one application, then never touch the $500 investment again. Same thing with the Sharp PDA. $70 is much more reasonable for this type of hobby.
As I said in a post to the previous related slashdot discussion; Ransom Love doesn't understand Open Source PR. His mouth gets the Open Source community to hate him each time he opens it in public. Different spin on his previous "no binaries!" comment and nobody would be upset.
Ransom Love does not understand Open Source PR, and it would be better for everyone if he were not so press-hungry. SUSE has a much better spin on essentially the same facts, and understand the Open Source community is not just a place to leech code from in order to turn a buck. SUSE understands to give/take relationship, Calera, specifically Rasom Love doesn't get it.
Next time you read a quote from Ransom love, understand two things: 1. He doesn't speak for his partners (SUSE/Turbo Linux in this case), even though he will make is sound like he is. 2. He doesn't understand Open Source PR and will be needlessly sticking his foot in his mouth...that's just what he does.
No gamer is complete without their own quad Xeon helping drive the pixels.
Talked to a guy at compaq once who had a little lan party with a few of those. Now THAT'S a high end game machine. I am told quake 2 ran fast on those babies.
In the Java "community", design patters are very popular as building blocks to build functional programs. There are many books available the the subject. One good one is EJB Design Patterns: Advanced Patterns,..., written by one of the guys who runs The ServerSide.com which also has a less formal discussion forum centering around design patterns.
While many design patterns are specific to good J2EE design, and may not be relevant for all types of application, many are general enough to be used in any object oriented language. May be part of what you are looking for.
-Pete (yes, the book link has my amazon id in it...click and buy the book. It's worth having.)
This has been an industry practice for quite some time. Many companies don't install a filter. And frankly, when they do, I know people that just go out to the neighborhood junction box and take them off. They are installed consistantly enough for the local cable company to ever know, if they come back to do additional work. Hell, when cable modems first came out around here, the cable company ran out of filers, so most cable-modem only users got a full cable feed, if they thought enough to try a TV on the line.
AC Wrote: The others, by cutting off the community, also cut off a future pool of admins and consultants--who is going to administer their "United Linux" systems? ---
Well, duh. The displaced SCO admins who have kept up with the times. Caldera aleady has mindshare with them...both of them. Why else you you think they bought SCO?
This would be a non-issue if Ransom Love understood Linux PR. If he answered the question differently, with the same "content", we wouldn't be as pissed. Something along the lines of: "The United Linux organization will assemble the source code of the product, which will be available to the public. We have decided it is the responibilities of the vendors to compile the product for their specific distributions. Since the raw code is not indended for end user use, UnitedLinux will not expend the resources to compile and maintain a binary distribution of the raw codebase, that is the responsibility of each UnitedLinux vendor..."
The "public outcry" may have been different. Same answer, same question, different spin.
I could really take advantage of the Integrated Wi-Fi, seeing how I just equiped both my home and office for it. Integrated Wi-Fi inso a PDA changes drastically the posibilities of usage for such a device. Wireless is what I believe will change PDA's from being an expensive rolodex and note pad into a crucial business device.
Too bad it's a PocketPC. The Sharp PDA looks interesting though, even though the Wi-Fi option is an aftermarket card.
Like we need to encourage people to use more capacity! I have more waves buzzing around me already than I know what to do with! I can feel my nuts being sterilized as we speak...err, maybe I should take my Dell lAttitude with 802.11b off my lap.
Yeah, that's better.
On a serious note we really need this, I want technologies that can let my 802.11b network at home work without interfearing with my cordless phone and 2.4gig audio/video transitter and reciever. Right now they all fight for the same spectrum and all lose in someway or another.
Be careful with this stuff. Batteries can be nasty. At my previous job we had a "switch room" which housed out 50,000kva (yes "K"va) UPS. On the wall across from it were huge "grab the handle and yank" circuit breakers...which were covered in battery acid from the previous UPS.
Now this wasn't your home little ups box, this thing would blend in with three refrigerators side by side, and would run a 500 person electronics factory, and 500 person office (PC's at least) for 8+ hours. That was a kickass battery box.
Just remember, UPS's can go "BOOM" and I wouldn't want to try my hand at making my own and seeing it for myself. Some things are better left to APC and crue.
Slashdot Mirror
It seems to me everyone is bitching about the wrong problem. Why is it the cable companies are unable to recoup their costs for their high bandwidth users? They are able to supply their users with big enough pipes at low cost. Their bandwith is cheap. Isn't it?
The problem is the Teco's. Cable providers in many cases, if not almost all, need to purchase their upstream bandwidth infrastructure from a phone company. Where bandwidth costs have gone through the floor for things like cable modems, etc, they have not moved one iota for the old copper T(X) lines. I don't work for a cable company, but we have had to pay a local techo a crapload of money, and wait months for an install to get a 10 foot T1 connection to our ISP. Why don't you just run direct for that 10 feet you ask? Good question! Contracts. Our ISP _MUST_ use the telco for all T1 type connection in our situation, whether it makes sense or not. It's in their contract with the telco. It was one thing they needed to do in order to get favorable terms for the hundreds of "real" T1's our ISP has from the telco.
Cable companies have two ends in their layer 1 supply chain, the consumer end and the phone company end. The consumer end is dirt cheap, thanks to the use of modern technologies and system upgrades. The phone company end still has a guy out in front of the building where I work trying to figure out which of 1000 something wires coming out of a copper bundle is supposed to be connected where. I've got news for you, the guy connecting the copper is not the most cost effective use of modern technology.
Some major changes need to happen in the infrastructure supply side of things. Until this happens, the consumers and cable companies are going to be "stressed."
-Pete
I always have someone else click "accept" for me anyway. That way I don't have to agree to the terms. Shared machines are even better, chances are you don't even know the person who clicked accept.
I am only half joking.
-Pete
One +2 posting, and the site is already slashdotted...wow.
Needless to say, I have not read the review, but the battery life on this sucker must be horrible! Either that, or you wear around a battery on your belt.
The features mentioned in the slashdot summary sound great, but I don't believe current battery technology can power such a package for any reasonable amount of time. I may be wrong, as I said, I havn't read the review, but I bet battery is what will make this unit suck.
-Pete
See the subject. Yes, a Mustang has crap speakers. Not all cars do. My previous BOSE equiped Maxima sounded at times like it had a small sub. My current Acura 3.2 TL has speakers which can give a full rich spectrum of sound, although you can only really tell my listening to classical music which I don't do much of.
-Pete
I am not in the market for one of these right now, but if I were, it would be a hard decision. Based on the business models and actions of the two companies, I would prefer to be giving my monthly usage fee to Sirius. I don't like the XM's idea of almost no, if any commercial free stations. They seem too money hungry. For example, they only have two satalites up there. Sirius has three, which offers them some redundancy if one craps out on them.
Sirius to me seems to be the more professional of the two, where XM seem to be the "Clear Channels version" of the two. That is how I have always thought of them, which is interesting since this is my first finding out Clear Channels is a part owner.
I wouldn't give my money to XM if I have a viable choice. Remember, XM has had a head start as well, give Sirius a little time to get underway, then we can do a more fair comparison.
-Pete
I seems every couple of months one of these "new storage breakthrough" comes along. What happens to them? Where do they go? It seems like these things have yet to make it into consumer (or even "professional") technology. Have heard a lot about high density solid state storage, and stuff like that, yet I still have a platter spinning at 7200RPM next to my feet. Arn't we a little outdated by other technology standards using spinning pieces of metal to store our information, with no end in sight?
These things are cool, but they become science breakthroughs, not news for nerds...stuff that matters? Do breakthroughs like this really matter to us? I am asking this because I really don't know. Where have semi-recent "Breakthroughs" like this made it into consumer technology that you and I can buy today? Or next year?
-Pete
Is this the real reason the green screeners at work claim the AS/400 is so secure? And all along I thought is was because there were only, I don't know, maybe 2 on the internet not behind massive firewalls!
hmm,
-Pete
see subject.
For example, we struggled with sites that use a technology called positioning to put ads on their pages. In IE, those ads temporarily hide part of the page, then go away. But in our Mozilla tests, the ads sometimes permanently blocked part of the page, and we had to reload the page until we got a different, regular, nonpositioning ad.
------
The problem is not the browser...but the ad. When will these people wake up? Did you catch that TWO of their few complains centered around use of ads, or features to stop ads? When you turn pop-ups off, it may disable some aspects of cnet.com (news.com?) that you really want to use. Hehe...yeah.
The ads causing a page to be non-function is a good reason to a) stop using the site and b) send the webmaster a poltite message telling them why you will never visit their site again.
-Pete
The department I work in is trying to put a bunch of "local level" government offices on the Internet. We need broadband speed connections from their offices to our data center. Getting some type of broadband installed in many of these places is absolutely horrible.
In many of these places, there is just no way to send a 50MB file once a day in a cost effective manor. We just had Iowa telecom decide not to offer flat rate ISDN to us because it would be to expensive for them. This was when we called them a week after the promised install date to see why it wasn't installed! It took us MONTHS to get to this point. Would have been nice if they had a couple months ago (before quoting us a price and delivery time) told us they wouldn't do it. We have promised our customer a price and delivery date (which is now well passed.) Iowa Telecom (or whatever their name is) has now offered us a price for ISDN which is more than our promised total price to the customer.
It is hard to believe phone companies can get away with this type of service, or lack thereof. We have now starting selling the service with a bring your own internet access spin. We have missed deadline after deadline due to the fact we cannot get tcp/ip access to these offices at reasonable prices, at the delivery time we are told. We are a "full service" provider, but there is no way we can deal with this crap. I'm sure we are not alone.
-Pete
"Hey guys, you know how lots of big servers die when we link to them? I just approved a submition with a link to a webserver running on a hand held! I got a stop watch...want take bets on the number of seconds it lasts? Better hurry!"
Come on timothy. How stupid is it to post to slashdot a link like this!?
-Pete
It will be interesting in the coming years to see how China evolves from their current state. The article talks about a man who was put in jail for a few years (a concrete cell as they describe it) for having a web site with a forum where people were talking about democracy and such. It is really very said, coming from a country which strongly supports people's rights to criticize, to see a person be put away for having a venue for free speech in the real true meaning of the term.
The section about the mine collapse was interesting as well. For those who didn't read the article, there was a mine collapse killing 81 people the "the government" did not want publicized, to the point of threatening journalists. It was released on a web site, and before long, mainstream journalists started picking the story up as well. This is really a revolutionary thing in a country where the press has historically been 100% controlled.
The public being informed is a major step in a country progressing into a "modern free government." Imagine the economic powerhouse they county may be able to transform itself into if more power and rights are given to the people.
-Pete
Gives a whole new meaning to the term spy-ware...don't you think?
-Pete
-- quote
According to the article the FAA invoked their "emergency powers" to force the new system in place in Syracuse against the inspectors and certifiers' recomendations. This sounds like a horrible mess waiting to happen.
--
Well, I work in a building right in line with the SYR main runway. I can tell how lined up a plane is by what section of the parking lot they fly over (we are talking a 20 car lot.) The planes are so close I can see which ones need to be repainted or washed.
So far...I'm still alive, that's a good sign. Also, recently I have seen some planes lining up with the runway much closer than before, I wonder if that means the controllers can handle the traffic better? That would be a good sign for if the system as a whole if it is rolled out in other places.
Anyway, when the system in SYR has problems, I'll be either the first...or last...to notify slashdot.
-Pete
"Outsiders could file complaints with an ombudsman, or go to an independent arbitration forum if they believed the group was violating its bylaws."
What is an ombudsman? Is it something slashdot, as an organized body could file complains to?
-Pete
At about $70 (Game Boy Advanced, Amazon price), you can create custom games, ports of other things, etc. This sounds to me like a much more practical thing to purchase to play around with the the PS2, which is in at least the $500 range to start hacking your own stuff for.
It would be interesting to know how many people will create practical, non-game applications. I know there are many non-game attachments, like a TV tuner and digital camera available for the unit.
I may actually get one of these myself to hack around with. The "other half" says I shouldn't waste money on the PS2, cuz I will may write one application, then never touch the $500 investment again. Same thing with the Sharp PDA. $70 is much more reasonable for this type of hobby.
-Pete
As I said in a post to the previous related slashdot discussion; Ransom Love doesn't understand Open Source PR. His mouth gets the Open Source community to hate him each time he opens it in public. Different spin on his previous "no binaries!" comment and nobody would be upset.
Ransom Love does not understand Open Source PR, and it would be better for everyone if he were not so press-hungry. SUSE has a much better spin on essentially the same facts, and understand the Open Source community is not just a place to leech code from in order to turn a buck. SUSE understands to give/take relationship, Calera, specifically Rasom Love doesn't get it.
Next time you read a quote from Ransom love, understand two things:
1. He doesn't speak for his partners (SUSE/Turbo Linux in this case), even though he will make is sound like he is.
2. He doesn't understand Open Source PR and will be needlessly sticking his foot in his mouth...that's just what he does.
-Pete
No gamer is complete without their own quad Xeon helping drive the pixels.
Talked to a guy at compaq once who had a little lan party with a few of those. Now THAT'S a high end game machine. I am told quake 2 ran fast on those babies.
-Pete
In the Java "community", design patters are very popular as building blocks to build functional programs. There are many books available the the subject. One good one is EJB Design Patterns: Advanced Patterns,..., written by one of the guys who runs The ServerSide.com which also has a less formal discussion forum centering around design patterns.
While many design patterns are specific to good J2EE design, and may not be relevant for all types of application, many are general enough to be used in any object oriented language. May be part of what you are looking for.
-Pete
(yes, the book link has my amazon id in it...click and buy the book. It's worth having.)
This has been an industry practice for quite some time. Many companies don't install a filter. And frankly, when they do, I know people that just go out to the neighborhood junction box and take them off. They are installed consistantly enough for the local cable company to ever know, if they come back to do additional work. Hell, when cable modems first came out around here, the cable company ran out of filers, so most cable-modem only users got a full cable feed, if they thought enough to try a TV on the line.
-Pete
AC Wrote:
The others, by cutting off the community, also cut off a future pool of admins and consultants--who is going to administer their "United Linux" systems?
---
Well, duh. The displaced SCO admins who have kept up with the times. Caldera aleady has mindshare with them...both of them. Why else you you think they bought SCO?
-Pete
This would be a non-issue if Ransom Love understood Linux PR. If he answered the question differently, with the same "content", we wouldn't be as pissed. Something along the lines of:
"The United Linux organization will assemble the source code of the product, which will be available to the public. We have decided it is the responibilities of the vendors to compile the product for their specific distributions. Since the raw code is not indended for end user use, UnitedLinux will not expend the resources to compile and maintain a binary distribution of the raw codebase, that is the responsibility of each UnitedLinux vendor..."
The "public outcry" may have been different. Same answer, same question, different spin.
-Pete
I could really take advantage of the Integrated Wi-Fi, seeing how I just equiped both my home and office for it. Integrated Wi-Fi inso a PDA changes drastically the posibilities of usage for such a device. Wireless is what I believe will change PDA's from being an expensive rolodex and note pad into a crucial business device.
Too bad it's a PocketPC. The Sharp PDA looks interesting though, even though the Wi-Fi option is an aftermarket card.
-Pete
Like we need to encourage people to use more capacity! I have more waves buzzing around me already than I know what to do with! I can feel my nuts being sterilized as we speak...err, maybe I should take my Dell lAttitude with 802.11b off my lap.
Yeah, that's better.
On a serious note we really need this, I want technologies that can let my 802.11b network at home work without interfearing with my cordless phone and 2.4gig audio/video transitter and reciever. Right now they all fight for the same spectrum and all lose in someway or another.
-Pete
Be careful with this stuff. Batteries can be nasty. At my previous job we had a "switch room" which housed out 50,000kva (yes "K"va) UPS. On the wall across from it were huge "grab the handle and yank" circuit breakers...which were covered in battery acid from the previous UPS.
Now this wasn't your home little ups box, this thing would blend in with three refrigerators side by side, and would run a 500 person electronics factory, and 500 person office (PC's at least) for 8+ hours. That was a kickass battery box.
Just remember, UPS's can go "BOOM" and I wouldn't want to try my hand at making my own and seeing it for myself. Some things are better left to APC and crue.
-Pete