But you are totally ignoring the reality of a very specific situation - feral cats in urban areas. What exactly is the natural control at work? Cats are wary, not many are killed by accidents. There is abundant food in an urban environment thanks to dumpsters. Furthermore, cats are great natural predators and left unchecked will decimate a bird population.
Starvation is definitely a limiting factor, at least in suburban areas. My mom's neighborhood has seen an increase in stray cats since the housing bust. Her county has been the leader in foreclosures every quarter for over 2 years.
But to the point, she rescued a cat last year that was starving. It was about 2-3 months old and if she hadn't fed it, it would have lasted maybe a couple more weeks. We had assumed it was barely weaned when she captured it, but after taking it to the vet she found it was nearly 3 months old and it's growth was stunted. It's still very skittish. You can't pick it up and if it doesn't know you, you won't see it.
As far as decimating the bird population, I haven't seen that either. For years my mom has had bird feeders in her yard. Being retired, she likes to watch the birds. Despite having two female cats with 3-4 kittens (combined) living under a neighbor's shed she hasn't seen a decrease in birds or squirrels.
That's unfortunate in one particular case, pigeons. Those things multiply faster than rats.
From my experience traffic and starvation are definite limiting factors for cats in populated areas. Spaying is certainly a preferable method for population control and there are a few catch, spay, and release organizations in town. Too bad they aren't as successful doing the same with deer. One local city had to run a special hunt with police sharpshooters to reduce the deer population in a park. They had to kill over 300 deer due to problem with starvation, disease, and encounters with SUVs.
Probably the easiest way to handle the issue is to just let the kids change their names.
Too bad it won't work. Changing your name is public record. As soon as those records are online, Google will index them. At most it will be an extra search.
The guy could have made his point without the "colorful language". That makes the profanity superfluous and... juvenile.
Possibly, but not necessarily with the impact intended. Profanity is superfluous and juvenile only because you are offended by it. Maybe I find the euphemism "colorful language" a juvenile way to avoid saying a particular word. Fuck is just another word.
There are plenty of examples of childish use of profanity online, but it is the use and not the profanity that is childish. And in my opinion the AC's use doesn't fall into that category.
I put in more than a little effort to keep my on and offline lifes seperate for a good reason.
Good luck with that. There are all kinds of things that will get your name online without having any connection to the internet. For example, a couple years ago I attended a city council meeting to oppose a stupid ordinance. My name and address are now searchable through Google because the city posts the meeting minutes on their website in PDF. And ironically, the council member that campaigned for the ordinance violates it whenever convenient.
I switched from using my Slashdot account with my real name to this one a few years ago, after using the other one for years, to try and separate online vs offline. But in a few more years I doubt it will make much difference. Technology will find a way to link and index everything eventually.
And Schmidt's just change your name plan won't work either. Changing your name requires public records that will one day be online as well and Google will happily index that option away too.
We are probably stuck living in a small town until long distance space travel becomes available. (where it is too expensive to send real-time data everywhere) Then, for a short time, we'll be back to past generations where if everyone in town shunned you for a bad action, you could move to another town for a fresh start.
While this is not an edorsement of cable VOIP over POTS I did want to point out that my cable providors EMTA actually has a battery backup built into it and lasts for quite some time when the power goes off. I assume (probably incorrectly?) that they have backup power at their 'Central Office' end of things.
I don't know where Time Warner's system fails. I just know that every time my power has gone out my equipment has stayed up but the cable network is down. I have a 1000va ups that powers just their modem, my router, and my switch. It will run for hours without power.
OTOH, my mom lost her power for a week recently due to a storm. Landline worked fine the whole time.
It's not an analogy. Parent post said And who would work for pay on an "up to" scale?, and that is exactly what commission work entails. Another example, go to CareerBuilder.com and search for "work from home". Nearly 20k hits and the first page is all Work From Home and Earn $500 - $1000/Week - Easy!. They are offering to pay on a scale with no definition of the job or the scale. But even if you were selling cars at the local Chevy dealer, your maximum pay rate isn't necessarily achievable because it entirely depends on traffic that is out of your control. If your employer 'oversubscribes' sales staff, your commissions will plummet because just like bandwidth, the size of the pie is limited.
New type of fast food hamburger.... up to 3 beef patties (actually doesn't contain any meat)
But a 1/2 lb. burger is 'up to' 1/2 lb. They always advertise the pre-cooked weight of the patties. Actual cooked weight will depend on the quality of the beef used.
And who would work for pay on an "up to" scale? I'm sure companies would be happy to pay someone "up to" four hundred dollars an hour.
It happens every day for people who work on a commission. It's kind of opposite of bandwidth demand, since increased traffic generally equates to higher sales and higher commissions. But regardless, the employer is not guaranteeing a maximum pay rate. At best they are guaranteeing a minimum pay rate at an absurdly low rate and a potentially much higher overall rate. And while ISPs don't guarantee a minimum contractual rate they do give a minimum in practice. Although it may be an absurdly low rate just like in the commission pay rate example.
Another way to look at it is the guy running the cash register down at 7-11 gets paid $8 an hour regardless of whether he has 1 customer per hour or 10. Is he getting $8 per hour or $.80 to $8 per customer?
Most people, even most hardcore nerds, don't download anywhere near that much.
Yet.
I launched my first BBS at 1200 bps and at the time it was a pretty good speed. A year later the big boards were installing 9600s. And a couple years later it was 56k. Early BBSs were text based message boards and didn't need a lot of speed. I had friends that were perfectly happy at 300 bps because that was as fast as they read. (no need for paging) As modems got faster BBSs added file downloads and graphics.
With ISPs we are working from the other side of equation. Speed has outpaced the providers ability to send content because we've gone to a shared medium. (modems provided a dedicated link from provider to consumer) But just like with BBSs, as speed increases so does content demand. Content demand will just continue to increase as new services are created. On a 1200 bps link you were happy with your 100k gifs of nekkid women. With broadband you want 100m mpgs. When you get into streaming video you're looking at 1-2g per hour for standard def TV. If you switched from broadcast TV to entirely online providers you would be looking at 75-150 hours of TV per month, assuming you don't degrade picture quality. That won't be acceptable in a year or two when everyone wants Netflix to send them 3 or 4 HD movies a week and HD content from the networks. So 150g per month is quickly going to limit your average couch potato consumer. Hardcore nerds sharing their Ubuntu DVDs are the lightweights in this environment.
Look at it another way. AT&T and Verizon have limited their data plans to 2g and 5g per month, respectively, saying that it is more than sufficient for their current definition of the service's intended use. The 2g is kind of tight if you're a regular internet user tethering your laptop, 5g isn't much of a problem if you also have occasional wifi access for large downloads and software updates. Neither limit is a problem for a regular user who is only consuming with their smart phone. My average session is about 10m reading all my news sites, unless I get into articles with linked photo essays and videos. And then it's pretty easy to hit 150m in a session. But I know people who frequent youtube that are going to have problems with 5g monthly limits.
I'm curious... do these speed issues pertain only to certain countries? or certain technologies?
...
Now that said, our largest competitor, a cable company, used to quote speeds that weren't even physically possible with the equipment they were offering...
I think you answered your own question. Advertised speeds seem to be accurate up to the point that the provider starts oversubscribing their infrastructure. Certain countries might have regulations concerning how much a service might be oversubscribed. But all bandwidth technologies have choke points, and the ones that are closest to the customer are the ones least likely to meet their advertised rates. Cable and wireless (3g) are using a shared medium all the way to the customer. DSL isn't shared until the customer gets to the DSLAM, and even there you have the experience/culture of engineers who are used to working in a much more regulated environment.
Another example of cultural disconnect. Time Warner used to continually try to get me to add home phone service to my cable/internet service. Yet it never occurred to them to install backup power capabilities to their network or encourage customers to install UPSs for their cable modems. During a storm related power outage my systems would stay online due to my precautions, but the cable network would be out, thus knocking out essential phone service if I used theirs. The Telco on the other hand has been regulated to require the local loop to be available unless physically damaged.
So I don't think it's unusual that you see ADSL performing at the stated rate. Your infrastructure has been designed conservatively. And Telcos currently have an abundance of bandwidth in the local loop due to the build-up during the 90's for fax machines and modems. Now people are shutting off those lines and going to alternatives. Cell phones for kids and alarm systems, e-mail instead of faxes, DSL and cable internet for computer connections.
As bandwidth demand increases (on-demand TV, streaming media, etc) and regulations are relaxed on Telcos so they can 'compete', you'll see them oversubscribing their links between the DSLAM and the CO simply because it's horrendously expensive to run new lines. And if other providers are allowed to continue they are at a financial disadvantage if they don't follow the industry.
Or you could go to a parts shop like Advance, Pep Boys, or NAPA and get a scan for free.
Unless it's a manufacturer specific code, such as GM anti-lock brakes or airbags. I have intermittent errors on both, and the GM dealer wants $75 (for each system) to pull the codes. I have a cheap OBDII scanner that worked fine when my temp sensor failed (PO118), and it reported the TPS sensor code (PO121) on my mom's car, but it doesn't do anti-lock or airbags. I went to O'Reilly's and theirs doesn't support them either, not even the ones they sell. I could of course order a new scanner, at ~300. I called Advance and they didn't think theirs would work either, at least the store that actually had a scanner. I need to stop in at Autozone, but I don't have a lot of confidence that they'll be loaning anything but a cheap scanner either.
Which is why, on all for walls in one of our halon-protected DCs, there's a big red mushroom switch that aborts the system.
Years ago I worked in a telco's datacenter (tape library) that was protected by a Halon system. During orientation we were specifically told that if the alarm sounded were were to get out of the room UNLESS the Halon was released. At that point you were to keep the fire doors shut, stay put and wait for it to do it's job. Although I suppose their logic could have been; better to lose a few tape apes than the entire building.
Later I worked at a government facility. We had the big red button but no Halon. The federal government was prohibited from using it at that point. So instead we had a sprinkler system. Procedure was for one operator to hold the abort button while the others pulled the t-bars and covered the vaxen with plastic sheets. Unfortunately, I worked a Sunday shift by myself. It was a truly crappy implementation even on weekdays. If the fire alarm went off operators were required to stay in the computer room until it was determined if there really was a fire that threatened the systems. While I was there we had one false alarm, one drill, and one incident with smoke but no fire. Only once did we kill the systems because it required 1-2 hours to get the cluster back online after that kind of shutdown. And it wasn't the incident with the smoke.
BTW, you should probably determine if the 'abort' button is accurately named. Many of them just suspend the release until the button is released, giving time for employees to exit and close fire doors. In those cases you have to continue to hold the button until the system is reset if you don't want a release.
Those are usually just for supplementary water heating. Solar thermal doesn't really work on a roof top, not for electricity generation anyway.
The largest use of energy in homes is heating and cooling. And solar thermal works quite well for that. Just don't try to convert it to electricity before using it.
I don't know that we need WikiLeaks. What we need is unbiased investigative reporting, something that is sorely lacking these days because it is hard work. WikiLeaks, aka Julian Assange, has a definite anti-war and possibly an anti-US agenda. Which is his right, I'm not one of those people that thinks 'inalienable rights' requires citizenship.
OTOH, his military source violated US laws and was well aware of what s/he was doing and should be prosecuted. Civil disobedience is not without it's risks. If we were in a real war this information leak would have resulted in a date with a firing squad.
As far as the case at hand, the gag orders as implemented are a complete violation. As long as the FISA court is working, and no one is implying that it isn't, there is no justification for national security letters. But publishing a few on WikiLeaks isn't going to have any real effect on their use. WikiLeaks would have about as much credibility with the average American as Al Jazeera.
What a sad place Slashdot has become. Next, someone will post how they regret selling their Neon. The only car that I formerly owned that I miss was my '67 Firebird.
Just because air-travel is currently the most aggravating form of travel I can imagine doesn't mean that I can't dream of a new golden age of air travel which has some dignity and tablecloths in it.
You can dream, but train travel is more likely to make a comeback than airships are, and even that is nearly beyond hope.
While airships would be interesting for scenic flights, I doubt many would take one to get from point A to point B. People will bitch and moan about being treated like cattle and then select the cheapest option nearly every time.
Train travel, in America at least, insists on using 100 year old rolling stock and wonders why it can't turn a profit. No new coaches made of lightweight composites to lower fuel costs. If a return to dignified traveling was possible we'd see trains consisting of Harry Potter like staterooms with a common lounge on an upper deck. And then some executive would say "install coach seats on the upper deck, double the price of the staterooms, and give me a big bonus." and we'd be right back where we started. But of course, we'd blame the failed experiment on people being too attached to traveling in cars.
Considering that Slashdot didn't even bother to report on this New York Times story about Slashdot
Interesting article. Slashdot isn't a big social media site. Social media is generally the term that journalists use for sites like Facebook and MySpace. They compare Slashdot traffic to; Stumble Upon, Digg, Reddit (never been to any of those on purpose) and Hacker News (never heard of it). And then we are asked to respond to the article via Twitter. (never used it)
There is good and bad about Slashdot, there always has been. But lets be clear, I come here to read and discuss topics. I'm not looking to be your 'friend'.
I would not do any of those. Desktop programming sucks. Embedded systems programming allows you to work with cool stuff,
That's a matter of personal preference. Even though I used to have business cards that listed my job as Code Monkey, I haven't been one for years. I prefer to work on in-house applications and probably less than a quarter of my time is coding. I do full cycle project management and spent more time working with people outside of IT than within. I like the requirements gathering and problem solving as much as the coding.
If you're doing embedded work you are most likely writing code for products your company is selling. You'll be handed a set of specs and be expected to churn out code.
Even though I have an interest in robotics and have done a couple small embedded projects (data collection), I have yet to see an interesting job posting for an embedded programmer. Coding widgets for a GPS or red light camera isn't what I want to do.
Especially if you are familiar with Pascal, which structurally is very similar to the languages you want to learn.
That depends an awful lot on what flavor of Pascal he is talking about. If it's Borland Pascal then he might have a solid foundation. But Turbo Pascal didn't get OOP until v5 or 5.5, and even from there it's a big leap into the Object Pascal that Delphi uses. There were no APIs or any of the logic for windows/frames/etc.
It's not the: if (++i > 10) {
j+=5;
i=0; } that will be the problem. It's the: mmoResolved.Lines.Add(sDomain + ': ' + TARecord(DNS.QueryResult.Items[0]).IPAddress);
It's a completely different mindset. Just ask any C programmer making the leap to C++.
From what I have seen from job listings lately; if you want to work for the government or build android apps, spend a lot of time getting good with Java. Most private businesses are looking for VB/C# and ASP to build web applications. The overall distribution of jobs is probably quite different, but those are the jobs they are advertising.
For someone looking to tackle this on a personal basis without investing a lot of money in tools, Android development is nice because you just need to download the Java JDK, the Android SDK, and Eclipse. You don't even need to own a smart phone. But be prepared, the Android emulator is going to need 10 times more resources than you think...
If you're looking to go Windows, don't waste your time working with Windows native (or.NET WinForms), go ASP. iOS is interesting, but Android is growing faster.
But the submitter didn't say whether this is for future employment, or 'what can I study to get back to work now'. If it's the latter, realize that no matter what language you choose, you won't have any real world experience and your non-coding experience means little. Interviews may be hard to get. They'll interview people who have experience in the language of choice and hope for good project management skills. They don't seem to want to risk hiring someone with a proven project management track record and hope you'll pick up their development language. Particularly since all his coding experience is pre-OOP and all his database experience is pre-SQL. So he may have to shell out for some certifications before he gets a chance to put on his monkey suit. Coding for a living is a bitch if you stay on one job and don't jump to new technologies when they start to take off.
Having said that, I'd download the Android tool chain. Set up a web server with ASP and PHP. Get Visual Studio Express and get familiar with VB and C# (both Winforms and ASP). Set up MySQL and SQL 2008 Express to get comfortable with SQL. Work with Java, VB, and C# and see which one suits your personality. And then hope the IT market has a drastic turn around.
BTW, the only thing there that costs money is the Windows license and possibly IIS. (don't know if there is a free version of IIS, haven't considered anything but Apache for over a decade)
I'm still trying to figure out how to modernize my silverware, though.
That's because you aren't using enough tech. Take all your food and throw in into blenders. Attach the blenders to a computerized paint mixer. And then pump it through a hose to your mouth. That way if you don't get enough cheese with your broccoli you can change it with a quick touch of the keyboard.
I still have some small details to work out though, like course separation. I keep getting mashed potatoes in my pie. Leftovers are a breeze though. I picked up a batch of surplus IV bags. Just pump in the leftovers and toss them in the fridge....
I wouldn't call it a bug as much as a poor design choice by a programmer that didn't understand how to code it properly. If you really need to know where the command interpreter is, use the %comspec% environment variable.
I think that a pass/fail is far more useful for the college/university level where the degree of passing a subject isn't that relevant.
I think you have it backwards. In grades K-12 its more important to know whether a child is mastering the concepts. It doesn't matter whether they have a firm grasp or a double-plus good one. In college, OTOH, future employers are looking at your GPA and using it as a guide to how well you accomplish the tasks that you are given.
Then next it will be C's. How about we just jump to the end and go pass/fail.
The problem isn't that students are getting D's. The problem is grade inflation where everyone needs to get an A or they're a loser, and school districts that can't bring themselves to actually fail a student so they give them a D and move the cattle along.
Once upon a time, C didn't mean mediocre, it meant average. A's and B's were for students that went above and beyond the school's expectations. A D was a signal that parents/teachers needed to invest some time helping that child master a given subject.
When I was in public school the district used the ESMIF grading scale.
E - excellent S - superior M - medium or average I - inferior F - failure
Now suppose that any place you performed below average you were considered a failure.
This is all sleight of hand to get the public to look at a new shiny thing while districts and communities continue to fail the next generation of children.
And here is a little more in-depth presentation. Mastery Learning
I would take it one step further, I would say there is only 1 passing grade. You have either mastered the subject or you have not.
The approach is a simple concept. If a student quickly masters a subject they can take a test and move on. If they haven't, then the teacher provides more instruction and study material until the student masters the topic. It would lead to schools allocating resources more efficiently to students; more to those that need them and less to those that do not. While that might not seem fair to parents who have 'smart kids', you have to realize that your child is going to have subjects where they excel and subjects where they struggle.
And if you must have some my kid is smarter than yours measurement, it can be the time it takes to master all the required subjects or the number of additional subjects mastered before graduation.
Or we reach good enough. How much storage do we really need on device?
I agree with your overall premise, but I have to disagree with one of your points.
If you are storing video 32 GBs is a huge amount of storage.
1 hour of analog TV on Tivo's medium quality setting is 1.2g. An average DVD (not HD) movie runs about 5.5g. Throw in OS, software, and miscellaneous other things and 32g can be pretty small when video storage is required.
But on that same note, do we really need every device to have the capacity of carrying everything that we own? We have homes so that we don't have to carry all our possessions everywhere we go. I expect to see NAS products to be more common and a central point where people share data between the variety of personal data devices that we are collecting. (smart phone, netbook/tablet, book reader, media player, etc) Servers and some desktops will need big harddrives, everything else will move to SSD.
BTW, cloud storage will always have one problem, it's out of your control. If it's something you HAVE to have access to at anytime, or security sensitive, you won't be putting it on a cloud. If people trusted other people to manage services that were critical for their business, SOAP servers would be everywhere.
Slashdot Mirror
But you are totally ignoring the reality of a very specific situation - feral cats in urban areas. What exactly is the natural control at work? Cats are wary, not many are killed by accidents. There is abundant food in an urban environment thanks to dumpsters. Furthermore, cats are great natural predators and left unchecked will decimate a bird population.
Starvation is definitely a limiting factor, at least in suburban areas. My mom's neighborhood has seen an increase in stray cats since the housing bust. Her county has been the leader in foreclosures every quarter for over 2 years.
But to the point, she rescued a cat last year that was starving. It was about 2-3 months old and if she hadn't fed it, it would have lasted maybe a couple more weeks. We had assumed it was barely weaned when she captured it, but after taking it to the vet she found it was nearly 3 months old and it's growth was stunted. It's still very skittish. You can't pick it up and if it doesn't know you, you won't see it.
As far as decimating the bird population, I haven't seen that either. For years my mom has had bird feeders in her yard. Being retired, she likes to watch the birds. Despite having two female cats with 3-4 kittens (combined) living under a neighbor's shed she hasn't seen a decrease in birds or squirrels.
That's unfortunate in one particular case, pigeons. Those things multiply faster than rats.
From my experience traffic and starvation are definite limiting factors for cats in populated areas. Spaying is certainly a preferable method for population control and there are a few catch, spay, and release organizations in town. Too bad they aren't as successful doing the same with deer. One local city had to run a special hunt with police sharpshooters to reduce the deer population in a park. They had to kill over 300 deer due to problem with starvation, disease, and encounters with SUVs.
Probably the easiest way to handle the issue is to just let the kids change their names.
Too bad it won't work. Changing your name is public record. As soon as those records are online, Google will index them. At most it will be an extra search.
The guy could have made his point without the "colorful language". That makes the profanity superfluous and ... juvenile.
Possibly, but not necessarily with the impact intended. Profanity is superfluous and juvenile only because you are offended by it. Maybe I find the euphemism "colorful language" a juvenile way to avoid saying a particular word. Fuck is just another word.
There are plenty of examples of childish use of profanity online, but it is the use and not the profanity that is childish. And in my opinion the AC's use doesn't fall into that category.
I put in more than a little effort to keep my on and offline lifes seperate for a good reason.
Good luck with that. There are all kinds of things that will get your name online without having any connection to the internet. For example, a couple years ago I attended a city council meeting to oppose a stupid ordinance. My name and address are now searchable through Google because the city posts the meeting minutes on their website in PDF. And ironically, the council member that campaigned for the ordinance violates it whenever convenient.
I switched from using my Slashdot account with my real name to this one a few years ago, after using the other one for years, to try and separate online vs offline. But in a few more years I doubt it will make much difference. Technology will find a way to link and index everything eventually.
And Schmidt's just change your name plan won't work either. Changing your name requires public records that will one day be online as well and Google will happily index that option away too.
We are probably stuck living in a small town until long distance space travel becomes available. (where it is too expensive to send real-time data everywhere) Then, for a short time, we'll be back to past generations where if everyone in town shunned you for a bad action, you could move to another town for a fresh start.
While this is not an edorsement of cable VOIP over POTS I did want to point out that my cable providors EMTA actually has a battery backup built into it and lasts for quite some time when the power goes off. I assume (probably incorrectly?) that they have backup power at their 'Central Office' end of things.
I don't know where Time Warner's system fails. I just know that every time my power has gone out my equipment has stayed up but the cable network is down. I have a 1000va ups that powers just their modem, my router, and my switch. It will run for hours without power.
OTOH, my mom lost her power for a week recently due to a storm. Landline worked fine the whole time.
It's not an analogy. Parent post said And who would work for pay on an "up to" scale?, and that is exactly what commission work entails. Another example, go to CareerBuilder.com and search for "work from home". Nearly 20k hits and the first page is all Work From Home and Earn $500 - $1000/Week - Easy!. They are offering to pay on a scale with no definition of the job or the scale. But even if you were selling cars at the local Chevy dealer, your maximum pay rate isn't necessarily achievable because it entirely depends on traffic that is out of your control. If your employer 'oversubscribes' sales staff, your commissions will plummet because just like bandwidth, the size of the pie is limited.
New type of fast food hamburger.... up to 3 beef patties (actually doesn't contain any meat)
But a 1/2 lb. burger is 'up to' 1/2 lb. They always advertise the pre-cooked weight of the patties. Actual cooked weight will depend on the quality of the beef used.
And who would work for pay on an "up to" scale? I'm sure companies would be happy to pay someone "up to" four hundred dollars an hour.
It happens every day for people who work on a commission. It's kind of opposite of bandwidth demand, since increased traffic generally equates to higher sales and higher commissions. But regardless, the employer is not guaranteeing a maximum pay rate. At best they are guaranteeing a minimum pay rate at an absurdly low rate and a potentially much higher overall rate. And while ISPs don't guarantee a minimum contractual rate they do give a minimum in practice. Although it may be an absurdly low rate just like in the commission pay rate example.
Another way to look at it is the guy running the cash register down at 7-11 gets paid $8 an hour regardless of whether he has 1 customer per hour or 10. Is he getting $8 per hour or $.80 to $8 per customer?
Most people, even most hardcore nerds, don't download anywhere near that much.
Yet.
I launched my first BBS at 1200 bps and at the time it was a pretty good speed. A year later the big boards were installing 9600s. And a couple years later it was 56k. Early BBSs were text based message boards and didn't need a lot of speed. I had friends that were perfectly happy at 300 bps because that was as fast as they read. (no need for paging) As modems got faster BBSs added file downloads and graphics.
With ISPs we are working from the other side of equation. Speed has outpaced the providers ability to send content because we've gone to a shared medium. (modems provided a dedicated link from provider to consumer) But just like with BBSs, as speed increases so does content demand. Content demand will just continue to increase as new services are created. On a 1200 bps link you were happy with your 100k gifs of nekkid women. With broadband you want 100m mpgs. When you get into streaming video you're looking at 1-2g per hour for standard def TV. If you switched from broadcast TV to entirely online providers you would be looking at 75-150 hours of TV per month, assuming you don't degrade picture quality. That won't be acceptable in a year or two when everyone wants Netflix to send them 3 or 4 HD movies a week and HD content from the networks. So 150g per month is quickly going to limit your average couch potato consumer. Hardcore nerds sharing their Ubuntu DVDs are the lightweights in this environment.
Look at it another way. AT&T and Verizon have limited their data plans to 2g and 5g per month, respectively, saying that it is more than sufficient for their current definition of the service's intended use. The 2g is kind of tight if you're a regular internet user tethering your laptop, 5g isn't much of a problem if you also have occasional wifi access for large downloads and software updates. Neither limit is a problem for a regular user who is only consuming with their smart phone. My average session is about 10m reading all my news sites, unless I get into articles with linked photo essays and videos. And then it's pretty easy to hit 150m in a session. But I know people who frequent youtube that are going to have problems with 5g monthly limits.
I'm curious... do these speed issues pertain only to certain countries? or certain technologies?
Now that said, our largest competitor, a cable company, used to quote speeds that weren't even physically possible with the equipment they were offering...
I think you answered your own question. Advertised speeds seem to be accurate up to the point that the provider starts oversubscribing their infrastructure. Certain countries might have regulations concerning how much a service might be oversubscribed. But all bandwidth technologies have choke points, and the ones that are closest to the customer are the ones least likely to meet their advertised rates. Cable and wireless (3g) are using a shared medium all the way to the customer. DSL isn't shared until the customer gets to the DSLAM, and even there you have the experience/culture of engineers who are used to working in a much more regulated environment.
Another example of cultural disconnect. Time Warner used to continually try to get me to add home phone service to my cable/internet service. Yet it never occurred to them to install backup power capabilities to their network or encourage customers to install UPSs for their cable modems. During a storm related power outage my systems would stay online due to my precautions, but the cable network would be out, thus knocking out essential phone service if I used theirs. The Telco on the other hand has been regulated to require the local loop to be available unless physically damaged.
So I don't think it's unusual that you see ADSL performing at the stated rate. Your infrastructure has been designed conservatively. And Telcos currently have an abundance of bandwidth in the local loop due to the build-up during the 90's for fax machines and modems. Now people are shutting off those lines and going to alternatives. Cell phones for kids and alarm systems, e-mail instead of faxes, DSL and cable internet for computer connections.
As bandwidth demand increases (on-demand TV, streaming media, etc) and regulations are relaxed on Telcos so they can 'compete', you'll see them oversubscribing their links between the DSLAM and the CO simply because it's horrendously expensive to run new lines. And if other providers are allowed to continue they are at a financial disadvantage if they don't follow the industry.
Or you could go to a parts shop like Advance, Pep Boys, or NAPA and get a scan for free.
Unless it's a manufacturer specific code, such as GM anti-lock brakes or airbags. I have intermittent errors on both, and the GM dealer wants $75 (for each system) to pull the codes. I have a cheap OBDII scanner that worked fine when my temp sensor failed (PO118), and it reported the TPS sensor code (PO121) on my mom's car, but it doesn't do anti-lock or airbags. I went to O'Reilly's and theirs doesn't support them either, not even the ones they sell. I could of course order a new scanner, at ~300. I called Advance and they didn't think theirs would work either, at least the store that actually had a scanner. I need to stop in at Autozone, but I don't have a lot of confidence that they'll be loaning anything but a cheap scanner either.
Which is why, on all for walls in one of our halon-protected DCs, there's a big red mushroom switch that aborts the system.
Years ago I worked in a telco's datacenter (tape library) that was protected by a Halon system. During orientation we were specifically told that if the alarm sounded were were to get out of the room UNLESS the Halon was released. At that point you were to keep the fire doors shut, stay put and wait for it to do it's job. Although I suppose their logic could have been; better to lose a few tape apes than the entire building.
Later I worked at a government facility. We had the big red button but no Halon. The federal government was prohibited from using it at that point. So instead we had a sprinkler system. Procedure was for one operator to hold the abort button while the others pulled the t-bars and covered the vaxen with plastic sheets. Unfortunately, I worked a Sunday shift by myself. It was a truly crappy implementation even on weekdays. If the fire alarm went off operators were required to stay in the computer room until it was determined if there really was a fire that threatened the systems. While I was there we had one false alarm, one drill, and one incident with smoke but no fire. Only once did we kill the systems because it required 1-2 hours to get the cluster back online after that kind of shutdown. And it wasn't the incident with the smoke.
BTW, you should probably determine if the 'abort' button is accurately named. Many of them just suspend the release until the button is released, giving time for employees to exit and close fire doors. In those cases you have to continue to hold the button until the system is reset if you don't want a release.
Those are usually just for supplementary water heating. Solar thermal doesn't really work on a roof top, not for electricity generation anyway.
The largest use of energy in homes is heating and cooling. And solar thermal works quite well for that. Just don't try to convert it to electricity before using it.
Like it or not, we need WikiLeaks.
I don't know that we need WikiLeaks. What we need is unbiased investigative reporting, something that is sorely lacking these days because it is hard work. WikiLeaks, aka Julian Assange, has a definite anti-war and possibly an anti-US agenda. Which is his right, I'm not one of those people that thinks 'inalienable rights' requires citizenship.
OTOH, his military source violated US laws and was well aware of what s/he was doing and should be prosecuted. Civil disobedience is not without it's risks. If we were in a real war this information leak would have resulted in a date with a firing squad.
As far as the case at hand, the gag orders as implemented are a complete violation. As long as the FISA court is working, and no one is implying that it isn't, there is no justification for national security letters. But publishing a few on WikiLeaks isn't going to have any real effect on their use. WikiLeaks would have about as much credibility with the average American as Al Jazeera.
Had an '85 Mazda 626 2-door, manual tranny.
What a sad place Slashdot has become. Next, someone will post how they regret selling their Neon. The only car that I formerly owned that I miss was my '67 Firebird.
Just because air-travel is currently the most aggravating form of travel I can imagine doesn't mean that I can't dream of a new golden age of air travel which has some dignity and tablecloths in it.
You can dream, but train travel is more likely to make a comeback than airships are, and even that is nearly beyond hope.
While airships would be interesting for scenic flights, I doubt many would take one to get from point A to point B. People will bitch and moan about being treated like cattle and then select the cheapest option nearly every time.
Train travel, in America at least, insists on using 100 year old rolling stock and wonders why it can't turn a profit. No new coaches made of lightweight composites to lower fuel costs. If a return to dignified traveling was possible we'd see trains consisting of Harry Potter like staterooms with a common lounge on an upper deck. And then some executive would say "install coach seats on the upper deck, double the price of the staterooms, and give me a big bonus." and we'd be right back where we started. But of course, we'd blame the failed experiment on people being too attached to traveling in cars.
Considering that Slashdot didn't even bother to report on this New York Times story about Slashdot
Interesting article. Slashdot isn't a big social media site. Social media is generally the term that journalists use for sites like Facebook and MySpace. They compare Slashdot traffic to; Stumble Upon, Digg, Reddit (never been to any of those on purpose) and Hacker News (never heard of it). And then we are asked to respond to the article via Twitter. (never used it)
There is good and bad about Slashdot, there always has been. But lets be clear, I come here to read and discuss topics. I'm not looking to be your 'friend'.
I would not do any of those. Desktop programming sucks. Embedded systems programming allows you to work with cool stuff,
That's a matter of personal preference. Even though I used to have business cards that listed my job as Code Monkey, I haven't been one for years. I prefer to work on in-house applications and probably less than a quarter of my time is coding. I do full cycle project management and spent more time working with people outside of IT than within. I like the requirements gathering and problem solving as much as the coding.
If you're doing embedded work you are most likely writing code for products your company is selling. You'll be handed a set of specs and be expected to churn out code.
Even though I have an interest in robotics and have done a couple small embedded projects (data collection), I have yet to see an interesting job posting for an embedded programmer. Coding widgets for a GPS or red light camera isn't what I want to do.
Especially if you are familiar with Pascal, which structurally is very similar to the languages you want to learn.
That depends an awful lot on what flavor of Pascal he is talking about. If it's Borland Pascal then he might have a solid foundation. But Turbo Pascal didn't get OOP until v5 or 5.5, and even from there it's a big leap into the Object Pascal that Delphi uses. There were no APIs or any of the logic for windows/frames/etc.
It's not the:
if (++i > 10) {
j+=5;
i=0;
}
that will be the problem. It's the:
mmoResolved.Lines.Add(sDomain + ': ' + TARecord(DNS.QueryResult.Items[0]).IPAddress);
It's a completely different mindset. Just ask any C programmer making the leap to C++.
From what I have seen from job listings lately; if you want to work for the government or build android apps, spend a lot of time getting good with Java. Most private businesses are looking for VB/C# and ASP to build web applications. The overall distribution of jobs is probably quite different, but those are the jobs they are advertising.
For someone looking to tackle this on a personal basis without investing a lot of money in tools, Android development is nice because you just need to download the Java JDK, the Android SDK, and Eclipse. You don't even need to own a smart phone. But be prepared, the Android emulator is going to need 10 times more resources than you think...
If you're looking to go Windows, don't waste your time working with Windows native (or .NET WinForms), go ASP. iOS is interesting, but Android is growing faster.
But the submitter didn't say whether this is for future employment, or 'what can I study to get back to work now'. If it's the latter, realize that no matter what language you choose, you won't have any real world experience and your non-coding experience means little. Interviews may be hard to get. They'll interview people who have experience in the language of choice and hope for good project management skills. They don't seem to want to risk hiring someone with a proven project management track record and hope you'll pick up their development language. Particularly since all his coding experience is pre-OOP and all his database experience is pre-SQL. So he may have to shell out for some certifications before he gets a chance to put on his monkey suit. Coding for a living is a bitch if you stay on one job and don't jump to new technologies when they start to take off.
Having said that, I'd download the Android tool chain. Set up a web server with ASP and PHP. Get Visual Studio Express and get familiar with VB and C# (both Winforms and ASP). Set up MySQL and SQL 2008 Express to get comfortable with SQL. Work with Java, VB, and C# and see which one suits your personality. And then hope the IT market has a drastic turn around.
BTW, the only thing there that costs money is the Windows license and possibly IIS. (don't know if there is a free version of IIS, haven't considered anything but Apache for over a decade)
I'm still trying to figure out how to modernize my silverware, though.
That's because you aren't using enough tech. Take all your food and throw in into blenders. Attach the blenders to a computerized paint mixer. And then pump it through a hose to your mouth. That way if you don't get enough cheese with your broccoli you can change it with a quick touch of the keyboard.
I still have some small details to work out though, like course separation. I keep getting mashed potatoes in my pie. Leftovers are a breeze though. I picked up a batch of surplus IV bags. Just pump in the leftovers and toss them in the fridge....
I wouldn't call it a bug as much as a poor design choice by a programmer that didn't understand how to code it properly. If you really need to know where the command interpreter is, use the %comspec% environment variable.
I think that a pass/fail is far more useful for the college/university level where the degree of passing a subject isn't that relevant.
I think you have it backwards. In grades K-12 its more important to know whether a child is mastering the concepts. It doesn't matter whether they have a firm grasp or a double-plus good one. In college, OTOH, future employers are looking at your GPA and using it as a guide to how well you accomplish the tasks that you are given.
How about just not giving credit for D's?
Then next it will be C's. How about we just jump to the end and go pass/fail.
The problem isn't that students are getting D's. The problem is grade inflation where everyone needs to get an A or they're a loser, and school districts that can't bring themselves to actually fail a student so they give them a D and move the cattle along.
Once upon a time, C didn't mean mediocre, it meant average. A's and B's were for students that went above and beyond the school's expectations. A D was a signal that parents/teachers needed to invest some time helping that child master a given subject.
When I was in public school the district used the ESMIF grading scale.
E - excellent
S - superior
M - medium or average
I - inferior
F - failure
Now suppose that any place you performed below average you were considered a failure.
This is all sleight of hand to get the public to look at a new shiny thing while districts and communities continue to fail the next generation of children.
There is some hope though. Some school districts are experimenting with going with subject master rather than grade advancement. Here is what the Kansas City Mo school district is trying to turn around a dying educational program.
And here is a little more in-depth presentation. Mastery Learning
I would take it one step further, I would say there is only 1 passing grade. You have either mastered the subject or you have not.
The approach is a simple concept. If a student quickly masters a subject they can take a test and move on. If they haven't, then the teacher provides more instruction and study material until the student masters the topic. It would lead to schools allocating resources more efficiently to students; more to those that need them and less to those that do not. While that might not seem fair to parents who have 'smart kids', you have to realize that your child is going to have subjects where they excel and subjects where they struggle.
And if you must have some my kid is smarter than yours measurement, it can be the time it takes to master all the required subjects or the number of additional subjects mastered before graduation.
Or we reach good enough.
How much storage do we really need on device?
I agree with your overall premise, but I have to disagree with one of your points.
If you are storing video 32 GBs is a huge amount of storage.
1 hour of analog TV on Tivo's medium quality setting is 1.2g. An average DVD (not HD) movie runs about 5.5g. Throw in OS, software, and miscellaneous other things and 32g can be pretty small when video storage is required.
But on that same note, do we really need every device to have the capacity of carrying everything that we own? We have homes so that we don't have to carry all our possessions everywhere we go. I expect to see NAS products to be more common and a central point where people share data between the variety of personal data devices that we are collecting. (smart phone, netbook/tablet, book reader, media player, etc) Servers and some desktops will need big harddrives, everything else will move to SSD.
BTW, cloud storage will always have one problem, it's out of your control. If it's something you HAVE to have access to at anytime, or security sensitive, you won't be putting it on a cloud. If people trusted other people to manage services that were critical for their business, SOAP servers would be everywhere.