Let's see, most comp-usa's and other retailers that are nervous about selling linux to begin with are going to be stuck with shelves full of 6.2 releases when the 7.0 release comes out ov beta in 30-60 days...
This is just not true... small retailers have the ability to ship product back to the distributer if within a certain number of days (typically 15-30).
Most small retailers will immediately pull 'old' software from the shelves as soon as a new product is annouced *and* immediately imminent.
The big resellers often have arangements with the software vendor to send back unsold packages (as do many large record stores, etc.).
After being burned a few times by various CC authroization companies and merchant accounts, I went out and did some research. By talking to a fairly large number of developers, one clear winner emerged: Signio.
Signio has since been purchased by Verisign and is now called Verisign Payment Services.
The reason why Signio came so highly recommended were for several reasons:
Great API: they give you plenty of tools on plenty of platforms to create a secure connection to their servers to gain an authorization. With other vendors I had to use cURL or another utility to get an authorization directly into our e-commerce systems.
Speed: 2-3 second average transaction time. And they are pretty much right... it goes thru quick. One of the major problems with the other vendors were that frequent time outs caused major problems. I need the information in real-time, Singio provides it
No per transaction fee: Singio is a flat rate of $40/mo for the PayFlowPro system (what you want if you are doing your own development).
Obviously you're going to need a Merchant account. Singio has partnered with numerous banks and financial institutions.
Have you ever noticed how just about every box on a store shelf is of a similar size and shape? Not just software, but cans of peas, soup, cereal, crackers, cookies, etc. If you make your package stand out too much, it won't fit properly and the stores will get mad at the manufacturers.
My old roomate used to be the manager of an Electronics Boutique. I don't know if anyone remembers what the old Tomb Raider boxes looked like. Instead of being square, they had these little tapers at the bottom of each box that extended out about 2 or so inches on each side. Essentially the Tomb Raider boxes weren't much bigger than stadard ones, but the odd shape made them take about 25%-50% more space than a standard one. IIRC, he said that EB eventually told Eidos that if they don't start making a normal shaped box that they'd start placing their products in profile view (like sideways).
EB owns something ike 25%+ of the retail software market. When they say something like that, most distributors listen.
I don't know if they ended up changing the box design in the end, but retailers and consumers have a lot of sway in products get packaged.
Additionally, this may be of interest to some people: Microsoft pays for the prime placement of their products, i.e. near the entrance, etc. So in effect, Microsoft pays rent in these stores, and are using this space to promote their products.
I imagine that MS Marketing guys probably chose a bigger box for streets/maps because it is probably a higher-margin item than, say, Windows 98SE. I can assure you that while they may charge 25% the price of Windows 98 for Streets/Maps, they didn't spend even near that fraction of man-hours on the project. Hence it is more profitable to sell one in a retail space.
Of course the obvious solution to all this is to don't buy from companies that overpackage. In this case, most of us are already adhering to this.
Also of note, anyone remember the old 'Havoc' packging? It was one of the coolest I can remember. It was pretty much the same general size constraint as a normal game box, only it was made out of egg-crate cardboard. Essentially it was packaging/protection for a jewel case that you could see thru a cutout in the middle. It was efficient, obviously recycled material--very cleaver and effective.
Another product that I thought had cleaver and somewhat efficient packaging was Fractal Design's Painter, which shipped in an actual Paint Can. Some think that is wasteful, but I think it is a great way to get a marketing message out. Further, most of those cans (even on 4 year old software) never made it to the dumpster because it was just too cool to throw away.
Besides, isn't it curious that they'd push CDR over Minidisc?
Obviously Minidisc is better suited for this application, but the reason they are going with the 77mm CD-R is obvious: All computers have CD-ROMs, for the most part, yet none (that I have seen) have minidisc players.
They are trying to stick with the Mavica theme of yesteryear (the floppy disc storage mechanism)--universal compatability, with no wires adaptors or extra equipment needed.
Mac OS will never replace something like Linux until somebody figures out how to offer ALL of the power of a CLI type interface in their GUI. Want to see a fun exercise? Use Finder or Win Explorer. Go into a directory, and erase everything over a certain size, with the string 'llama' somewhere in the title, that is more than three days old.
I am not trying to belittle the power of the CLI. Quite honestly I prefer to do all my file management with a CLI. But on this Windows 2000 workstation here at home, I just busted out the start->search->files and folders, set it to look for everything in a certain directory over a certain size, with llama in a a title that was created over three days ago, and it came back exactly as I wanted--which I was suprised to find much easier than doing that by hand on a command line.
However, one of the most powerful (most?) things about a CLI is that it is really easy to leverage that power from remote. Sure Windows 2000 has a telnet daemon now, but can you change the screen resolution from it? How about change the mouse or remove a driver? On a Linux machine, it stores the configs in text, which is easy to modify from a CLI or a GUI. I guess I'm saying its easy to 'retrofit' a gui over a CLI but not always the other way around.
From what I can tell the price (~$2500) doesn't include the motherboards or memory which they obtained from various sources. This is probably one of the most significant outlays they had to make, next to the processors.
It is still really a great price, and I can't believe what they paid for the racks.
This leads to the question: is there a way to guarantee that it is in Company X's best interest to protect my privacy? Can public pressure and the threat of diminishing sales make all companies champions of privacy, hypocritically or otherwise?
See this is where I start to have some problems with legislation and regulation.
I think it is hypocritical to support free speech, even so-called 'freedom of information' stuff that many./ers believe in., yet advocate laws 'protecting' privacy. The problem is that if you play both sides of the fench, you essentially are advocating more government control--it blurs the line of what the government is and is not responisble for.
I argue that it is not any government's responsibility to 'protect' your privacy. The same way its not their responsibility to to tell you what you can and can't say, do drugs, or where to get your medical coverage.
Many./ers consider themselves libertarians. The definition of beign a libertarian is essentially that you should be able to look out for your own best interests, without the government interfering. I would just question everyone's overall political beliefs before the knee-jerk into supporting certain legislation.
And as a consumer you absolutely have the ability to sway, or making privacy in the best interests of corporations. I think that privacy agreements are already adding a lot of value to b2c web sites, etc. So its an excellent point, and if you value your privacy it is important to vote with your dollars, and let the merchants know why you bought from them.
OTOH, I'm not sure I'd trust someone who did their page in frontpage to tell me what domain name registrar to use.
I must say, I too don't put a whole lot of merit on their opinions, due mostly to the obviously amatuerish implementation. I am professinal and trust the opinion (or at least take into account) the opinions of other professionals. I can't imagine that the folks that put together this evaluation have ever done professional web work. So, I would conclude that their perspective is signficantly different than my own and I've certainly taken their opinion with a grain of salt.
What's funny is that the site propably does appeal to squatters, which very well could be who they are trying to target with the review.
I've evaluated methods for implementing multi-lingual sites.
First off you've got to determine what language the end user wants to view the site with. This can be done multiple ways: client hostname, browser version (language), server hostname (ie. japan.bigcorp.com), or by hitting a button or link on the page. Typically, I lean towards using the hostname (if ($HTTP_HOST) == "deutsch.bigcorp.com") { $lang = "de"; }) in combination with link set a cookie for the language choice. The 'guessing' of the desired language based on the browser or the client hostname doesn't work all that well because there are a lot of foreign nationals in the states that may want to view in their native language, and vice versa for overseas.
Once we've determined the language choice, typically I have multiple tables in the database for the language options. I.e. headlines.en or headlines.de and you just append the language choice: <? if (!isset($lang)) { $lang="en"; } $query = "SELECT headline, link FROM headlines.$lang"; ?>
So for pulling from a db that's pretty easy. When We want to present seperate pages or page layouts for the different languages (i.e. localized data, or product offerings, etc.), its not too hard to do either. You can do it with http header redirects: <? if ($lang == "de") { $location = "page.de.php3"; } else { $location = "page.en.php3"; } header("Location: $location");
Or (this is what we usually do), when building a frameset point to the proper language page:redirects:
Images are the same sort of thing. We just would append the language code to the image (or easier, is to set the $image_path to like "/images.de", etc.) Then you just pull from the selected images path.
If you are building images dynamically, and they have text embedded into them, you're going to have to hax0r it to output the language of your choice. However, I think that many of the Internet users from abroad understand that its really a English/American dominated network, and if everything isn't offered in their native language, they aren't going to get super pissed off. If you make an effort to get the key content in as many languages as you can, you'll be in good (better) shape.
What becomes tricky (and what I don't have much experience with) is the non-roman based languages (ie. asian languages). We typically have to outsource this work to a translation company, and they tend to provide us with rasterized and vector-based files that we can then embed into our site. If you find a good translation company, they should have experience doing this sort of thing and probably can help you figure out the best methods to employ. The do this stuff for a living, and many of them are top notch.
I keep thinking of the number one thing that is going to make this inneffective, is also the same thing that we're affraid of: signal-to-noise ratio.
Essentially we pretty much all agree that school administrators are going to be going on a wild goose chase on most of the anonymous tips. Because people can provide the information anonymously, and there is no reprecussions for posting false information, bogus reports will run rampant. It will be used as a tool to pick on the same kids that they are trying to 'help'.
We ourselves are capable of encouraging and submitting reports that may or may not be 'legitimate'. Meaning, there is nothing wrong with me reporting that John Doe(pick a fictious name) in the school in Anytown USA has been displaying 'violent behavior' regardless of weather I have ever even been to Anytown USA. By creating a high signal-to-noise ratio, will school administrators just toss the reports into the trash?
The only way that the Pinkerton people could make their information become 'valuable' again would be to place some accountability on the informants--essentially what we think they should be doing anyway.
Perhaps this provides a ability for us to essentially change the policies on a grassroots level?
The current price tag on a standalone LCD is between approx 900 (Viewsonic) and 1167$ (IBM). Add the thinnest mainboard possible and you get a price tag higher than the price of a cheap laptop.
Actually a pentium single board computer would cost you about $350-$400. A Pentium II or Celeron one would set you back about $550-$700.
And an OEM LCD of similar quality to the one that ships on the iOpener would cost you *maybe* $300.
Bullshit, the search engines 'bubble' certain sites up to the top, not because they really match what you want, but because some big company pays yahoo or excite or whathaveyou to make it happen. Most people don't look past the first few hits, if even the first page of hits. So a company can buy its way to the top, pushing other (most likely more relivent sites) down...which the average user won't even bother to see.
Actually, while this is true for services such as Yahoo, where it is a directory, more then a actual search engine, this is not entirely true for other engines.
Altavista, for example offers its 'real name' service, that if a user puts "Joe's Widgets" it will return the "Joe's Widgets Worldwide, Inc." homepage.
Ask Jeeves is a whore to corporate marketing, that much is true. We're definately at the mercy of the AJ staff as far as content that is given priority--but even then its just priority, and we're still given the rest of the search results.
As far as I know Google doesn't offer any such bubbling services, and for that reason among others (simple, straight-forward and accurate searching) is becoming extremely popular.
But what isn't commonly known is that the number one item that determines priority, or will put a search result to the top on a spidering engine is the number of links that outside sites have linking to it. So by defintion, the 'most popular' sites will come to the top--and this is usually what you want.
The interesting implication of this is the populus has a lot of control over this. On our personal homepages, posted personal bookmarks etc., we 'vote' for what pages will be listed at the top. So sites that have exceptional content, using the current search engine model will have priority over the best 'evil-empire' built site, unless the Evil Empire Inc., goes out and buys priority from all the search engines. And if this happens too much, search engines will loose a lot of credibility--take Altavista for example: how many of us still use it as our primary search engine? Google has filled the niche for people who like the power of Altavista's search engine, but don't like the bullshit Doubleclick ads all over the place, the RealNames, them trying to be a 'portal', etc (all stuff they started doing after they got sold off).
So I'd say that those are some pretty clear examples of how competition has flourished even in the midst of (albiet smaller) 'corporate entitites' trying to modify information access and priority.
I was an Systems Engineer for a Cobalt reseller for about a year. I no longer work for the reseller, but have still been a fan of the products. After quitting my old job, I have actively been helping people out on the Cobalt users list, and still admin some Cobalt servers. I've been one of their strongest supporters... until they started getting into this whole Chilisoft ASP business
A couple of months back they announced that they would be offering support for the Chilisoft ASP product, I got pretty upset about the whole deal. To follow the thread, click here.
Basically my argument is that there is an excellent opensource project called PHP that pretty much does everything that ASP can do (and in most cases does it better, easier, etc.) that they are largely ignoring. They don't even offer a supported installation of PHP on their equipment. Its classified as 'experimental'. So rather than contribute developers to PHP and support the project, or even support it, they are going with a third party hack of a hack by Microsoft! What gives!?
I realize that Cobalt gear is targeted to companies currently deploying Microsoft technologies. But to skip over a very popular and worthy open-source solution in favor of a closed-source solution that is helping M$ technology market and mind share is an insult to the community their products are based upon.
So the only way for me to continue support Cobalt's products and their users, Cobalt will have to:
Open Source the Chilisoft ASP Package
Offer PHP *supported* & *out of the box*
If it doesn't happen, I'm going to no longer be a Cobalt advocate. I'd rather spend my money with a company like VA Linux that is actively promoting and giving back to the Open Source community. Hell, some could argue that even Sun has contributed more back to the community.
-kris
Incidently, I did an informal survey not to long ago and lost the actual results, but I figured about 25-30% of Cobalt customers are using PHP on their machines currently in its 'unsupported' state. Imagine the penetration if they offered a supported out-of-the box solution? It would be a great boost to the PHP install & user base.
Then, I'm guessing it won't be another 2 years before someone comes along with a plugin to automatically filter commercials out. #snip# Not that I blame TiVo for this phenomenon -- it's most likely coming no matter what, but it's a concern nevertheless.
What this means is just that the networks are going to have to change their business model. On-demand delivery of content is an entire paradigm shift, and if they don't change the way the look at the marketplace, third party companies are going to come in and steal the revenue stream.
I've thought long and hard about the possibility of 'death of commercials', etc., and each time I come to this conclusion: eventually you will be able to 'buy out' your own commercial time. Its almost the same thing with cable right now. You pay for a 'premium' service that represents the revenue stream to the content provider. They don't care if they have ads, or if its a subscription-based deal. Basically, I see it all shifting to subscription-based content--which is the only obvious solution when you can pick and choose programming as networks and other content providers directly support on-demand content. There will probably be a fee for these services, ie. the new Simpsons will cost you $1.00 to watch. BUT a company that wants you to see its advertisements will be able to bid for your time, essentially saying "hey, we'll pay for your subscription cost for this program if you view our add twice during the show".
The nice thing for geeks is that we tend to value content(time) over price(typically 'cause we're well paid). I would gladly pay a $1.00 every half-hour to view a TV show minus the ads. But if its not worth a $1.00 to you to watch commercials, you would still have the option of viewing the content. Everyone wins.
I'm in the exact same boat... bought the TNT2 Ultra, because I didn't like the 3DFX gear.
They looked like they were going in the right direction, and when they announced the deal with SGI and VA Linux, I was pretty stoked.
But lately, it just hasn't been working. I have thought seriously about 'downgrading' to a V3 3000, or going back to Matrox cards. I am certain that my next card will be required to have Open Source drivers.
I tend to not buy hardware that doesn't have good Linux support--even if its not going into a Linux machine--so that hopefully someone can come up with a product Matrix of cards that have OpenSource drivers, and directly compare that against sales figures. Eventually its going to be pretty obvious to manufacturers. A large portion of the 'hardcore' computer market are Linux users. We buy a lot of gear, and should have a large impact on the market.
I'm wondering if anyone at Nvidia has read the Cathedral and the Bazaar. I would be willing to purchase the dead tree edition and send it to the CTO of Nvidia.
When I send E-mail, I often don't know where the receipient is. State regulation of E-mail would create a requirement that I must know, and that I must then check the laws of that state to see if I comply, or risk being sued or prosecuted there.
This is a passage from the law in question: (a) Uses a third party's internet domain name without permission of the third party, or otherwise misrepresents or obscures any information in identifying the point of origin or the transmission path of a commercial electronic mail message;
I strongly feel that if you are spoofing your return address, using other peoples SMTP servers for relaying, or just plain hijacking mail servers, the burdon to make sure that I am not in Washington (I am) is yours.
There is absolutely no reason why you should fake email addresses, return addresses, etc. on unsolicited email. If you have no way of knowing that I'm in Washington, then Don't send mass, unsolicited emailings while spoofing you address! Or be prepared to pay the piper.
I am against censorship... and I feel that sending unsolicited email should be protected. I have filters, blacklists, etc. to help foil these attempts to email me. But when a SPAMmer essentially tries to deceive me by saying they are coming from nonexistantuser@nonexistantdomain.com, and aren't conforming to the RFCs for abuse policies, etc. I don't think its should be protected. Its an issue of truth in advertising.
Well, we stopped by Circuit City this morning to get our units--they didn't have any, but we placed the orders. Should be here within a week.
They have no way of even signing you up for service according to the gentlemen we talked to.
I have been trying to come up with the best Ethernet situation on these things. And for Linux at least, we're looking at Parallel port adapters as pretty much the only way to go. Eventaully, however, there should be a supported USB network interface that will work out well.
After talking it over with my brother, we concluded that BeOS might be the best OS to install on this thing--the USB support for the network adapters is there, so we're probably going that route instead of linux for the time being. Also you should be able to get Windows on there as well, if you want. Going to be tight on 32m of RAM, however.
I am actually planning using these for two purposes: 1 MP3 machine for my car. Looks like I won't even have to get a DC Inverter, because it currently uses an AC Adapter to plug into the wall. But its 19V, (little under 2a, if I remember correctly), which may prove to be a little difficult to get going in the car. 2 I'm also using going to be using one as a super small footprint terminal for co-located Racks. Basically hang this unit in a rack or cabinent for when we do maintaince work on the headless workstations. Otherwise you have to drag a KB, Mouse, etc, or notebook computer to work on a machine that is co-located. Not fun. With this, I can spend $100, use a couple extra 2.5" ide hard drives I've got and have a monitor and diagnostic type machine. Can control and manage the routers, switches via serial (with a USB to serial adapter) and the servers via IP on a network adapter. Pretty slick.
What I find really interesting is that on the Links to sources noted at left: it only lists Netcraft. Netcraft's findings are the only objective and confirmable findings on that entire page! Why not give us links to the papers by the Gartner Group, etc.
It is pretty funny how they compare their number 2 (MS) standings in the most popular web platform against the number 3 (Sun) competitor, but eirily ignore the number 1 (Linux).
Dell, the largest e-business on the Internet, runs on Windows. Correct me if I am wrong, but I BELIEVE that Amazon.com accounted for more than half of all online spending last year. How could Dell then be the largest e-business? Calling Dell that may be misleading--much if not most of their business is still coming from mailed catalogs, etc. According to Netcraft: www.amazon.com is running Stronghold/2.4.2 Apache/1.3.6 C2NetEU/2412 (Unix) on DIGITAL UNIX This is just their main web server, which isn't what I'd consider to be the 'meat' of the site, but it gives you an idea that they aren't running MS SQL 7.0.
I'm looking all over the place for the winners of the Beanie awards. I assumed they had been awarded, but I guess this confirms it. What is the deal? Does anyone have a link to results?
If I remember correctly, there are a whole lot of laws and workarounds involved with reverse engineering technology.
I believe that AMI and other BIOS manufacturers and clone makers of the old IBM XT days had to employ reverse engineers that built a notebook that provides specific information on how to build a PC BIOS (in this case a DVD Decoder). This information was then given to clean (virgin) engineers that have no idea how the information was obtained and aren't even familar with the original product. They then build from a set of documentation the chip (or software).
Do you think that if you had of employed such sneaky methods that you may not be in the position you are in? Is there anything that you regret doing or wish you had of done differently?
Second question: What do you think the outcome of this whole situtation will be?
Good luck, and we appreciate the sacrifices that you are making for the all of us.
Quote: Universities already have forced monopolies in on-campus housing and on-campus food service in most places (although admittedly this isn't universal), and many universities seem to be pretty intent on keeping them.
These are so much monopolies as they are licenses. In my neck of the woods, Mariot pays for the rights to and provides the food service for on-campus. This benefits of a system like this typically outweigh any concequences. It is really done because for a simple reason: limited resources. You can't have a 25 McDonalds on Campus--it'd take up too much space and would be obtrusive. Plus real estate cost money, and a lot of it.
The issue of phone service is entirely different. We are talking about unobstrusive resources (bandwidth is cheap! REALLY CHEAP!) that are not defined or finite. If the students are using too much bandwidth, then get more bandwidth. Simple problem with a simple solution. If this means that they have to charge a slight 'access fee' (I'm thinking like $5 a student per quarter) for campus internet then so be it. $5 x 5000 (students) / 3 (months in a quarter) = > $8000 per month to by more bandwidth. That will get you roughly 5-10 more T1's, or perhaps get you to the budget for a T3, etc.
So what we have here is a case of an easy to finance, inexpensive service that is attractive and in demand by students vs. a campus-run probably profitable service that may suffer. It is not in the student's best interest to block the service and such restrictions should be eliminted.
I haven't heard of any other campuses that don't have their own long distance service banning such services, but perhaps I just haven't hear of them.
> This suggestion sounds more like the > Seti@Home project - mass distributed > computing power used to scan for signals.
The algorithm to find the singnal from Mars and the single from *anything* is so vast that there would be no advantage of using Seti@Home's client or any of their technologies. Distributed.net is much more able to handle the job (and in an quick fashion) becuase they write open source clients, etc.
The problem I see is that it would require quite a bit of engineering time (probably) to write a client that can then be distributed. But it may actually offer enough computing cycles to be able to do the computation in real time. Would that be any advantage to the NASA folks? Probably not. Even if they find the Polar Lander, the only information they will be able to get from it will be (hopefully) what went wrong. From what I've been hearing, there is no real method of getting any real research information back from the unit.
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Let's see, most comp-usa's and other retailers that are nervous about selling linux to begin with are going to be stuck with shelves full of 6.2 releases when the 7.0 release comes out ov beta in 30-60 days...
This is just not true... small retailers have the ability to ship product back to the distributer if within a certain number of days (typically 15-30).
Most small retailers will immediately pull 'old' software from the shelves as soon as a new product is annouced *and* immediately imminent.
The big resellers often have arangements with the software vendor to send back unsold packages (as do many large record stores, etc.).
So that is not really a big issue.
-k
Signio has since been purchased by Verisign and is now called Verisign Payment Services.
The reason why Signio came so highly recommended were for several reasons:
Obviously you're going to need a Merchant account. Singio has partnered with numerous banks and financial institutions.
Anyway, they seem to be top-notch.
-k
Have you ever noticed how just about every box on a store shelf is of a similar size and shape? Not just software, but cans of peas, soup, cereal, crackers, cookies, etc. If you make your package stand out too much, it won't fit properly and the stores will get mad at the manufacturers.
My old roomate used to be the manager of an Electronics Boutique. I don't know if anyone remembers what the old Tomb Raider boxes looked like. Instead of being square, they had these little tapers at the bottom of each box that extended out about 2 or so inches on each side. Essentially the Tomb Raider boxes weren't much bigger than stadard ones, but the odd shape made them take about 25%-50% more space than a standard one. IIRC, he said that EB eventually told Eidos that if they don't start making a normal shaped box that they'd start placing their products in profile view (like sideways).
EB owns something ike 25%+ of the retail software market. When they say something like that, most distributors listen.
I don't know if they ended up changing the box design in the end, but retailers and consumers have a lot of sway in products get packaged.
Additionally, this may be of interest to some people: Microsoft pays for the prime placement of their products, i.e. near the entrance, etc. So in effect, Microsoft pays rent in these stores, and are using this space to promote their products.
I imagine that MS Marketing guys probably chose a bigger box for streets/maps because it is probably a higher-margin item than, say, Windows 98SE. I can assure you that while they may charge 25% the price of Windows 98 for Streets/Maps, they didn't spend even near that fraction of man-hours on the project. Hence it is more profitable to sell one in a retail space.
Of course the obvious solution to all this is to don't buy from companies that overpackage. In this case, most of us are already adhering to this.
Also of note, anyone remember the old 'Havoc' packging? It was one of the coolest I can remember. It was pretty much the same general size constraint as a normal game box, only it was made out of egg-crate cardboard. Essentially it was packaging/protection for a jewel case that you could see thru a cutout in the middle. It was efficient, obviously recycled material--very cleaver and effective.
Another product that I thought had cleaver and somewhat efficient packaging was Fractal Design's Painter, which shipped in an actual Paint Can. Some think that is wasteful, but I think it is a great way to get a marketing message out. Further, most of those cans (even on 4 year old software) never made it to the dumpster because it was just too cool to throw away.
-k
Besides, isn't it curious that they'd push CDR over Minidisc?
Obviously Minidisc is better suited for this application, but the reason they are going with the 77mm CD-R is obvious: All computers have CD-ROMs, for the most part, yet none (that I have seen) have minidisc players.
They are trying to stick with the Mavica theme of yesteryear (the floppy disc storage mechanism)--universal compatability, with no wires adaptors or extra equipment needed.
-k
Mac OS will never replace something like Linux until somebody figures out how to offer ALL of the power of a CLI type interface in their GUI. Want to see a fun exercise? Use Finder or Win Explorer. Go into a directory, and erase everything over a certain size, with the string 'llama' somewhere in the title, that is more than three days old.
I am not trying to belittle the power of the CLI. Quite honestly I prefer to do all my file management with a CLI. But on this Windows 2000 workstation here at home, I just busted out the start->search->files and folders, set it to look for everything in a certain directory over a certain size, with llama in a a title that was created over three days ago, and it came back exactly as I wanted--which I was suprised to find much easier than doing that by hand on a command line.
However, one of the most powerful (most?) things about a CLI is that it is really easy to leverage that power from remote. Sure Windows 2000 has a telnet daemon now, but can you change the screen resolution from it? How about change the mouse or remove a driver? On a Linux machine, it stores the configs in text, which is easy to modify from a CLI or a GUI. I guess I'm saying its easy to 'retrofit' a gui over a CLI but not always the other way around.
-k
From what I can tell the price (~$2500) doesn't include the motherboards or memory which they obtained from various sources. This is probably one of the most significant outlays they had to make, next to the processors.
It is still really a great price, and I can't believe what they paid for the racks.
-k
Is it just me?--or does anyone else see 22 computers in that rack.
They probably just don't quite have enough for a 5x5 (25), and so are dropping down to a 4x4 until they get a couple more machines going.
-k
This leads to the question: is there a way to guarantee that it is in Company X's best interest to protect my privacy? Can public pressure and the threat of diminishing sales make all companies champions of privacy, hypocritically or otherwise?
./ers believe in., yet advocate laws 'protecting' privacy. The problem is that if you play both sides of the fench, you essentially are advocating more government control--it blurs the line of what the government is and is not responisble for.
./ers consider themselves libertarians. The definition of beign a libertarian is essentially that you should be able to look out for your own best interests, without the government interfering. I would just question everyone's overall political beliefs before the knee-jerk into supporting certain legislation.
See this is where I start to have some problems with legislation and regulation.
I think it is hypocritical to support free speech, even so-called 'freedom of information' stuff that many
I argue that it is not any government's responsibility to 'protect' your privacy. The same way its not their responsibility to to tell you what you can and can't say, do drugs, or where to get your medical coverage.
Many
And as a consumer you absolutely have the ability to sway, or making privacy in the best interests of corporations. I think that privacy agreements are already adding a lot of value to b2c web sites, etc. So its an excellent point, and if you value your privacy it is important to vote with your dollars, and let the merchants know why you bought from them.
-k
OTOH, I'm not sure I'd trust someone who did their page in frontpage to tell me what domain name registrar to use.
I must say, I too don't put a whole lot of merit on their opinions, due mostly to the obviously amatuerish implementation. I am professinal and trust the opinion (or at least take into account) the opinions of other professionals. I can't imagine that the folks that put together this evaluation have ever done professional web work. So, I would conclude that their perspective is signficantly different than my own and I've certainly taken their opinion with a grain of salt.
What's funny is that the site propably does appeal to squatters, which very well could be who they are trying to target with the review.
-k
I've evaluated methods for implementing multi-lingual sites.
First off you've got to determine what language the end user wants to view the site with. This can be done multiple ways: client hostname, browser version (language), server hostname (ie. japan.bigcorp.com), or by hitting a button or link on the page. Typically, I lean towards using the hostname (if ($HTTP_HOST) == "deutsch.bigcorp.com") { $lang = "de"; }) in combination with link set a cookie for the language choice. The 'guessing' of the desired language based on the browser or the client hostname doesn't work all that well because there are a lot of foreign nationals in the states that may want to view in their native language, and vice versa for overseas.
Once we've determined the language choice, typically I have multiple tables in the database for the language options. I.e. headlines.en or headlines.de and you just append the language choice:
<?
if (!isset($lang)) {
$lang="en";
}
$query = "SELECT headline, link FROM headlines.$lang";
?>
So for pulling from a db that's pretty easy. When We want to present seperate pages or page layouts for the different languages (i.e. localized data, or product offerings, etc.), its not too hard to do either. You can do it with http header redirects:
<?
if ($lang == "de") {
$location = "page.de.php3";
} else {
$location = "page.en.php3";
}
header("Location: $location");
Or (this is what we usually do), when building a frameset point to the proper language page:redirects:
<?
if ($lang == "de") {
$location = "page.de.php3";
} else {
$location = "page.en.php3";
}?>
<frame src="<? echo $location;?>">
Images are the same sort of thing. We just would append the language code to the image (or easier, is to set the $image_path to like "/images.de", etc.) Then you just pull from the selected images path.
If you are building images dynamically, and they have text embedded into them, you're going to have to hax0r it to output the language of your choice. However, I think that many of the Internet users from abroad understand that its really a English/American dominated network, and if everything isn't offered in their native language, they aren't going to get super pissed off. If you make an effort to get the key content in as many languages as you can, you'll be in good (better) shape.
What becomes tricky (and what I don't have much experience with) is the non-roman based languages (ie. asian languages). We typically have to outsource this work to a translation company, and they tend to provide us with rasterized and vector-based files that we can then embed into our site. If you find a good translation company, they should have experience doing this sort of thing and probably can help you figure out the best methods to employ. The do this stuff for a living, and many of them are top notch.
-k
I keep thinking of the number one thing that is going to make this inneffective, is also the same thing that we're affraid of: signal-to-noise ratio.
Essentially we pretty much all agree that school administrators are going to be going on a wild goose chase on most of the anonymous tips. Because people can provide the information anonymously, and there is no reprecussions for posting false information, bogus reports will run rampant. It will be used as a tool to pick on the same kids that they are trying to 'help'.
We ourselves are capable of encouraging and submitting reports that may or may not be 'legitimate'. Meaning, there is nothing wrong with me reporting that John Doe(pick a fictious name) in the school in Anytown USA has been displaying 'violent behavior' regardless of weather I have ever even been to Anytown USA. By creating a high signal-to-noise ratio, will school administrators just toss the reports into the trash?
The only way that the Pinkerton people could make their information become 'valuable' again would be to place some accountability on the informants--essentially what we think they should be doing anyway.
Perhaps this provides a ability for us to essentially change the policies on a grassroots level?
-k
The current price tag on a standalone LCD is between approx 900 (Viewsonic) and 1167$ (IBM). Add the thinnest mainboard possible and you get a price tag higher than the price of a cheap laptop.
Actually a pentium single board computer would cost you about $350-$400. A Pentium II or Celeron one would set you back about $550-$700.
And an OEM LCD of similar quality to the one that ships on the iOpener would cost you *maybe* $300.
-k
Bullshit, the search engines 'bubble' certain sites up to the top, not because they really match what you want, but because some big company pays yahoo or excite or whathaveyou to make it happen. Most people don't look past the first few hits, if even the first page of hits. So a company can buy its way to the top, pushing other (most likely more relivent sites) down...which the average user won't even bother to see.
Actually, while this is true for services such as Yahoo, where it is a directory, more then a actual search engine, this is not entirely true for other engines.
Altavista, for example offers its 'real name' service, that if a user puts "Joe's Widgets" it will return the "Joe's Widgets Worldwide, Inc." homepage.
Ask Jeeves is a whore to corporate marketing, that much is true. We're definately at the mercy of the AJ staff as far as content that is given priority--but even then its just priority, and we're still given the rest of the search results.
As far as I know Google doesn't offer any such bubbling services, and for that reason among others (simple, straight-forward and accurate searching) is becoming extremely popular.
But what isn't commonly known is that the number one item that determines priority, or will put a search result to the top on a spidering engine is the number of links that outside sites have linking to it. So by defintion, the 'most popular' sites will come to the top--and this is usually what you want.
The interesting implication of this is the populus has a lot of control over this. On our personal homepages, posted personal bookmarks etc., we 'vote' for what pages will be listed at the top. So sites that have exceptional content, using the current search engine model will have priority over the best 'evil-empire' built site, unless the Evil Empire Inc., goes out and buys priority from all the search engines. And if this happens too much, search engines will loose a lot of credibility--take Altavista for example: how many of us still use it as our primary search engine? Google has filled the niche for people who like the power of Altavista's search engine, but don't like the bullshit Doubleclick ads all over the place, the RealNames, them trying to be a 'portal', etc (all stuff they started doing after they got sold off).
So I'd say that those are some pretty clear examples of how competition has flourished even in the midst of (albiet smaller) 'corporate entitites' trying to modify information access and priority.
-k
Click here to get your local listing
http://www.cobalt.com/about/pres s/2000/000323.html
I was an Systems Engineer for a Cobalt reseller for about a year. I no longer work for the reseller, but have still been a fan of the products. After quitting my old job, I have actively been helping people out on the Cobalt users list, and still admin some Cobalt servers. I've been one of their strongest supporters... until they started getting into this whole Chilisoft ASP business
A couple of months back they announced that they would be offering support for the Chilisoft ASP product, I got pretty upset about the whole deal. To follow the thread, click here
Basically my argument is that there is an excellent opensource project called PHP that pretty much does everything that ASP can do (and in most cases does it better, easier, etc.) that they are largely ignoring. They don't even offer a supported installation of PHP on their equipment. Its classified as 'experimental'. So rather than contribute developers to PHP and support the project, or even support it, they are going with a third party hack of a hack by Microsoft! What gives!?
I realize that Cobalt gear is targeted to companies currently deploying Microsoft technologies. But to skip over a very popular and worthy open-source solution in favor of a closed-source solution that is helping M$ technology market and mind share is an insult to the community their products are based upon.
So the only way for me to continue support Cobalt's products and their users, Cobalt will have to:
- Open Source the Chilisoft ASP Package
- Offer PHP *supported* & *out of the box*
If it doesn't happen, I'm going to no longer be a Cobalt advocate. I'd rather spend my money with a company like VA Linux that is actively promoting and giving back to the Open Source community. Hell, some could argue that even Sun has contributed more back to the community.-kris
Incidently, I did an informal survey not to long ago and lost the actual results, but I figured about 25-30% of Cobalt customers are using PHP on their machines currently in its 'unsupported' state. Imagine the penetration if they offered a supported out-of-the box solution? It would be a great boost to the PHP install & user base.
Then, I'm guessing it won't be another 2 years before someone comes along with a plugin to automatically filter commercials out.
#snip#
Not that I blame TiVo for this phenomenon -- it's most likely coming no matter what, but it's a concern nevertheless.
What this means is just that the networks are going to have to change their business model. On-demand delivery of content is an entire paradigm shift, and if they don't change the way the look at the marketplace, third party companies are going to come in and steal the revenue stream.
I've thought long and hard about the possibility of 'death of commercials', etc., and each time I come to this conclusion: eventually you will be able to 'buy out' your own commercial time. Its almost the same thing with cable right now. You pay for a 'premium' service that represents the revenue stream to the content provider. They don't care if they have ads, or if its a subscription-based deal. Basically, I see it all shifting to subscription-based content--which is the only obvious solution when you can pick and choose programming as networks and other content providers directly support on-demand content. There will probably be a fee for these services, ie. the new Simpsons will cost you $1.00 to watch. BUT a company that wants you to see its advertisements will be able to bid for your time, essentially saying "hey, we'll pay for your subscription cost for this program if you view our add twice during the show".
The nice thing for geeks is that we tend to value content(time) over price(typically 'cause we're well paid). I would gladly pay a $1.00 every half-hour to view a TV show minus the ads. But if its not worth a $1.00 to you to watch commercials, you would still have the option of viewing the content. Everyone wins.
-k
I'm in the exact same boat... bought the TNT2 Ultra, because I didn't like the 3DFX gear.
They looked like they were going in the right direction, and when they announced the deal with SGI and VA Linux, I was pretty stoked.
But lately, it just hasn't been working. I have thought seriously about 'downgrading' to a V3 3000, or going back to Matrox cards. I am certain that my next card will be required to have Open Source drivers.
I tend to not buy hardware that doesn't have good Linux support--even if its not going into a Linux machine--so that hopefully someone can come up with a product Matrix of cards that have OpenSource drivers, and directly compare that against sales figures. Eventually its going to be pretty obvious to manufacturers. A large portion of the 'hardcore' computer market are Linux users. We buy a lot of gear, and should have a large impact on the market.
I'm wondering if anyone at Nvidia has read the Cathedral and the Bazaar. I would be willing to purchase the dead tree edition and send it to the CTO of Nvidia.
-k
When I send E-mail, I often don't know where the receipient is. State regulation of E-mail would create a requirement that I must know, and that I must then check the laws of that state to see if I comply, or risk being sued or prosecuted there.
This is a passage from the law in question:
(a) Uses a third party's internet domain name without permission of the third party, or otherwise misrepresents or obscures any information in identifying the point of origin or the transmission path of a commercial electronic mail message;
I strongly feel that if you are spoofing your return address, using other peoples SMTP servers for relaying, or just plain hijacking mail servers, the burdon to make sure that I am not in Washington (I am) is yours.
There is absolutely no reason why you should fake email addresses, return addresses, etc. on unsolicited email. If you have no way of knowing that I'm in Washington, then Don't send mass, unsolicited emailings while spoofing you address! Or be prepared to pay the piper.
I am against censorship... and I feel that sending unsolicited email should be protected. I have filters, blacklists, etc. to help foil these attempts to email me. But when a SPAMmer essentially tries to deceive me by saying they are coming from nonexistantuser@nonexistantdomain.com, and aren't conforming to the RFCs for abuse policies, etc. I don't think its should be protected. Its an issue of truth in advertising.
-k
Well, we stopped by Circuit City this morning to get our units--they didn't have any, but we placed the orders. Should be here within a week.
They have no way of even signing you up for service according to the gentlemen we talked to.
I have been trying to come up with the best Ethernet situation on these things. And for Linux at least, we're looking at Parallel port adapters as pretty much the only way to go. Eventaully, however, there should be a supported USB network interface that will work out well.
After talking it over with my brother, we concluded that BeOS might be the best OS to install on this thing--the USB support for the network adapters is there, so we're probably going that route instead of linux for the time being. Also you should be able to get Windows on there as well, if you want. Going to be tight on 32m of RAM, however.
I am actually planning using these for two purposes:
1 MP3 machine for my car. Looks like I won't even have to get a DC Inverter, because it currently uses an AC Adapter to plug into the wall. But its 19V, (little under 2a, if I remember correctly), which may prove to be a little difficult to get going in the car.
2 I'm also using going to be using one as a super small footprint terminal for co-located Racks. Basically hang this unit in a rack or cabinent for when we do maintaince work on the headless workstations. Otherwise you have to drag a KB, Mouse, etc, or notebook computer to work on a machine that is co-located. Not fun. With this, I can spend $100, use a couple extra 2.5" ide hard drives I've got and have a monitor and diagnostic type machine. Can control and manage the routers, switches via serial (with a USB to serial adapter) and the servers via IP on a network adapter. Pretty slick.
-k
What I find really interesting is that on the Links to sources noted at left: it only lists Netcraft. Netcraft's findings are the only objective and confirmable findings on that entire page! Why not give us links to the papers by the Gartner Group, etc.
It is pretty funny how they compare their number 2 (MS) standings in the most popular web platform against the number 3 (Sun) competitor, but eirily ignore the number 1 (Linux).
Dell, the largest e-business on the Internet, runs on Windows. Correct me if I am wrong, but I BELIEVE that Amazon.com accounted for more than half of all online spending last year. How could Dell then be the largest e-business? Calling Dell that may be misleading--much if not most of their business is still coming from mailed catalogs, etc. According to Netcraft:
www.amazon.com is running Stronghold/2.4.2 Apache/1.3.6 C2NetEU/2412 (Unix) on DIGITAL UNIX
This is just their main web server, which isn't what I'd consider to be the 'meat' of the site, but it gives you an idea that they aren't running MS SQL 7.0.
-k
I was really hoping to see a breakdown of the votes as well as just the winners. Or at least a 1st, 2nd, 3rd. Is there plans to do this?
-k
I'm looking all over the place for the winners of the Beanie awards. I assumed they had been awarded, but I guess this confirms it. What is the deal? Does anyone have a link to results?
Thanks!
-kris
If I remember correctly, there are a whole lot of laws and workarounds involved with reverse engineering technology.
I believe that AMI and other BIOS manufacturers and clone makers of the old IBM XT days had to employ reverse engineers that built a notebook that provides specific information on how to build a PC BIOS (in this case a DVD Decoder). This information was then given to clean (virgin) engineers that have no idea how the information was obtained and aren't even familar with the original product. They then build from a set of documentation the chip (or software).
Do you think that if you had of employed such sneaky methods that you may not be in the position you are in? Is there anything that you regret doing or wish you had of done differently?
Second question: What do you think the outcome of this whole situtation will be?
Good luck, and we appreciate the sacrifices that you are making for the all of us.
-k
Quote: Universities already have forced monopolies in on-campus housing and on-campus food service in most places (although admittedly this isn't universal), and many universities seem to be pretty intent on keeping them.
These are so much monopolies as they are licenses. In my neck of the woods, Mariot pays for the rights to and provides the food service for on-campus. This benefits of a system like this typically outweigh any concequences. It is really done because for a simple reason: limited resources. You can't have a 25 McDonalds on Campus--it'd take up too much space and would be obtrusive. Plus real estate cost money, and a lot of it.
The issue of phone service is entirely different. We are talking about unobstrusive resources (bandwidth is cheap! REALLY CHEAP!) that are not defined or finite. If the students are using too much bandwidth, then get more bandwidth. Simple problem with a simple solution. If this means that they have to charge a slight 'access fee' (I'm thinking like $5 a student per quarter) for campus internet then so be it. $5 x 5000 (students) / 3 (months in a quarter) = > $8000 per month to by more bandwidth. That will get you roughly 5-10 more T1's, or perhaps get you to the budget for a T3, etc.
So what we have here is a case of an easy to finance, inexpensive service that is attractive and in demand by students vs. a campus-run probably profitable service that may suffer. It is not in the student's best interest to block the service and such restrictions should be eliminted.
I haven't heard of any other campuses that don't have their own long distance service banning such services, but perhaps I just haven't hear of them.
-K
> This suggestion sounds more like the
> Seti@Home project - mass distributed
> computing power used to scan for signals.
The algorithm to find the singnal from Mars and the single from *anything* is so vast that there would be no advantage of using Seti@Home's client or any of their technologies. Distributed.net is much more able to handle the job (and in an quick fashion) becuase they write open source clients, etc.
The problem I see is that it would require quite a bit of engineering time (probably) to write a client that can then be distributed. But it may actually offer enough computing cycles to be able to do the computation in real time. Would that be any advantage to the NASA folks? Probably not. Even if they find the Polar Lander, the only information they will be able to get from it will be (hopefully) what went wrong. From what I've been hearing, there is no real method of getting any real research information back from the unit.
-k