My fiance' moved to the US from Sweden about five months ago. With a Masters' degree from one of Europe's most prestigious CompSci/Engineering universities, a Sun java certification, and several years' proven experience with some of Europe's largest IT consulting firms doing SQL programming, PHP/ASP scripting, Java & Linux development - We had one hell of a time finding an employer in the US to sponsor her.
Nearly all of the firms with listings in our area flatly stated that they would not sponsor. Most of them print this in their ads. The reasons are simple:
1. $1,000 sponsorship fee, paid to US Government 2. $1,000 15-day H1B premium processing fee, payable by employee. If you don't chose this option, paperwork takes 3-5 months. 3. $130 filing fee. 4. An absolute blizzard of paperwork. We were unable to find an immigration attorney in our city that even understood the process. (South Bend, Indiana) - We ended up retaining a high-caliber immigration specialist from Houston TX. Their fee? $1,750.
It's safe to say that none but the Fortune 1000 are willing to tackle the expense or have the expertise in handling the daunting forms.
We finally found a local company willing to sponsor her, a local health care facility. They were very excited to get her, offered to hire her on the spot and reimbursed half her expenses. Why? *drumroll* - The position went unfilled for nearly five months as they were unable to find a qualified person locally.
She is most certainly not being taken advantage of, having been offered a salary very much in line with her duties and educational background.
Say what you will about the H1-B, but we can certainly tell you - It's alot harder to get sponsored than you think.
This certainly is a terrific idea! However, working as a network engineer at one of the nation's first widely deployed consumer wireless access companies, I'm all too familiar with the expenses involved in building such a solution.
Ultimately, while playing with the technology and the design of your "NaN" would be fun, we live in a world where bandwidth providers will not accept make-believe money for the pipe(s) to your "NaN" router(s). The issue would quickly become:
1. Who among your neighbors would be willing to shoulder the cost of the bandwidth, AP's, router(s), switch(es), and lend the time and expertise in the installation and configuration of same, and
2. Who is willing to face the inevitable slew of legal and/or licensing challenges in reselling or providing bandwidth for free to the neighbors on your "NaN". Are you willing to pay for a T1 out of your own pocket to feed the bandwidth need? If not, and your neighbors throw monthly contributions into the hat, you face a host of very real-world, non technical legal, tax and business issues.
Please don't misinterpret these points! I think it's a neat idea. However we must remember, regardless of the technology available, ultimately the twin evils of Money and Regulations drive the market; free or otherwise.
If an "Internet Bandwidth Commune" is your goal, don't lose sight of the inescapable truth that somewhere, sometime, eventually SOMEONE will have to pay for it.:(
Always enjoyable to see the media "discover" something that's been around for a long while:)
Here at www.skyburst.net in sleepy South Bend, Indiana we've been doing the exact same thing for similar reasons. This region of the country is a black hole of dark fiber, non-existant or poor cable operator access and hostile CLEC/ILEC's that are not offering DSL OR creating peering arrangements with ISP's to do so. Our Ameritech office here literally will not return phone calls to ANYONE inquiring about DSL.
..rears it's ugly head. To think that an avertiser can get away with these tactics is rediculous.
In traditional media outlets, particularly newspaper and radio, companies can specifically request or be GUARANTEED that advertisements for competing products or services will NOT appear within x-many column inches of newspaper or x-minutes of radio play.
If I were advertising my theoretical car dealership, what is the effectiveness of that ad if a SECOND companies' commercial runs right behind mine? What if they KNEW they could get that slot and intentionally undercut all my sale prices in THEIR ad? I'd cancel my ad run and refuse payment to the station, among other things.
This situation actually happened when I was working at a Northeast-Ohio computer company, when a popular area FM radio station ran OUR ad with a COMPETITOR'S ad right behind it! We actually called the competitor, said "do you know they are doing this?" upon which BOTH of us called the station manager threatening to cancel BOTH ad runs unless they were scheduled at least 3 minutes apart, per their agreement.
This has to be one of the better, shining examples of the "wild west" cowboy cavalier attitude so predominant on the internet running smack into the brick wall of common sense.
Hey, perhaps Microsoft should approach Andover, offer them four times their standard banner rates and plaster WindowsXP ads all over Slashdot.
Comparative Hype Value; Economics
on
Movies in Space?
·
· Score: 4
Hm..The debate seems to be the usefulness of an orbital studio. Considering leading man/leading lady salaries today, paying the soviet space agency one million dollars per head to get a director, photographer + two actors into the "studio" for a week's worth of filming is... cheap. With the entire shot area of scenes draped in bluescreen fabric, virtually anything can be composited in - A much larger interior, an industrial complex, an enormous hangar with ships and robots scuttling around.
The novelty factor is remarkably high. But don't tell me that had Ron Howard, Tom Hanks & Co. shot 30 minutes worth of capsule interiors in the studio that it WOULDN'T have added value to the film. People admire Hank's dedication to his craft when he loses 35 pounds for films like "Castaway" or "Philadelphia"; The pure accuracy of the visuals in a zero-g filmed movie with a cast like that would transcend gadget value, and fall welllllll within today's bloated A-movie budgets.
So Lou Perlman wants to put Superflous Bubblegum Band v2.0 into orbit for a live concert? To haul up 4 prettyboys + camera guy = 5.5, 6 million dollars? Ten million households pay $29 for the pay-per-view, and after it's all said and done - Hey, he still made a ton of money off pure gadget value.
Amazing, how the IT sector, with a much higher than average percentage of agnosts, atheists and downright good old-fashioned nonbelievers, are so quick to jump on Alex's inventions. Inventions that smack of little more than a covered wagon, carnival barker and a crate of snake oil.
My elderly mother, who has MS, tried "magnetic therapy" devices (shoe innersole, and shiatsu massager) some time ago. After having witnessed the (complete and utter) lack of usefulness, I firmly believe these devices work in so much that they are extremely effective in seperating the user from $30 of their hard-earned money.
What will you people be posting about next? Phrenology? The Scientology aura-reading device?
Yes Dan, but what % of those persons BOUGHT mandrake boxed, and how many downloaded it? RedHat seems to generate most of their income with support contracts, or so I read somewhere.
Um.. my good buddy Jack over there at SkyBurst internet ( http://www.skyburst.net ) has been doing affordable wireless internet access for businesses and residential customers alike for over two years. What is with all these articles on/. extolling wirless as some Flash-Gordon future technology?! In this case, It's already deployed throughout a giant section of the South Bend / Michiana area. If the idea of downloading MP3's at a red light or at home @ 150k/sec is appealing to you, check it out! Corporate consulting services also available.
Well, to answer the gentleman who said "Athlon 4" was a "stupid marketing ploy", consider - The readership of Slashdot, and persons who assemble their own PC's, period.. Are a far, far smaller percentage of the computer-buying public than the cluebies who buy PC's at Best Buy as though they were $1,000 toaster ovens. Branding is important; It's how THOSE people will remember "Athlon." YOU remember specs, performance - Technical information. THOSE people need a counter to Blue Man Group's P4 commercials. Like.. Stomp hopping around on trash can lids, singing the praise of Athlon Instead.
So is our Moon, but we spent >$1 trillion dollars to send 11 (?) different astronauts, a golf club + Titleist ball, and a $50 million dollar go-kart (which we neglected to bring back.)
Yanno, if you took one flake of dead skin off your arm and slipped it into a scanning electron microcsope, it would look exactly like all of the above photos.
I guess the moral of the story is, if you look at a blob-shaped cumulus cloud hoping to see a giraffe, you will see a giraffe.
The presence of sentient life is easy to spot. Symmetrical placement of objects; Placement or creation of objects/material with straight lines and the presence of (near) perfect circular anything. None of these appear naturally according to any rules we can think of. The wind doesn't stack rocks, vegetation or fuel cells in convenient piles near one's hovel.:)
Wouldn't it be funny though, if Mars is in fact totally dead (like our moon) but we are stumbling across some OTHER civilation's space exploration program?:) Oh, rediculous I know but it would make an interesting movie.
Who cares what you or I think, the biggest obstacle this company faces is convincing the automakers in the united states to start installing factory audio head units capable of receiving the "XM" frequencies as well.
And you thought cell phones were a distraction? How many of you reading this actually listen to one complete song on FM radio? Yes, you station-surf constantly, don't you; We all have two minute hamsterlike attention spans. Is having 100 channels to flip through a really fantastic idea?
Well, granted, I suppose once you're on the interstate, FM dies and you are presented with Country OR Western as your choices, I think I'd rather try the 12 digitally broadcast techno channels... Hmm.. XM huh?
Anyone else figured out that it would be potentially possible to distribute entire albums at 44 KHz 16 bit quality this way?:)
The short-sightedness of elected officials (or humanity at large) is frightening sometimes.
The internet is the medium in question in this article; So what? This is about cultural and social issues, folks.
In the United States, there is a reason states are allowed to pass their own laws. Even within the SAME COUNTRY there are regionalized pockets of persons with differing opinions from the "national average." Nevermind the entire WORLD, with it's dozens (hundreds) of vastly different cultures.
The German government has a throbbing exposed nerve concerning neonazi or nazi era material or propaganda on the internet due their unique obvious historical perspective. Does this mean that a college student in Oregon should be denied the opportunity to study the rise of the Third Reich? If a [flaming idiot] white supremacist in Florida wishes to publish a neo-nazi website on a local ISP who agrees to host the material, doesn't the FIRST AMENDMENT of the UNITED STATES guarantee his or her RIGHT to publish this material? Are we missing something here?!
Had I been born in a different corner of the world, I'd probably (if I had net access) be composing this while sporting a stylish 2 foot long PENIS SHEATH with my buttcheeks flapping in the wind as I strode off. In my society this would be no more unusual than wearing DOCKERS. Does this mean my smiling picture on my homepage should set off your NET NANNY? Would it be PORNOGRAPHY in YOUR COUNTRY?
Once again, nearsighted politicians have ignored common sense. Even given the broad diversity of culture, within the Human Experience there is a framework for agreeing on what is generally 'right or wrong'. Someone r00t1ng your webserver and defacing it is most likely ALREADY illegal in the G-8 nations. This legislation would appear to open an entire CRATE of ethnic/religious/political/cultural worms that NOONE will be satisfied with.
Let the Germans shut down nazi/neo-nazi sites in their own country or prosecute persons owning this material in GERMANY.
Let the Americans prosecute persons posessing child pornography. If the content is legal in the country of origin, who are we to go storming after their ISP's?
For god's sake, someone dig up Ben Franklin and clone him; We need more humanists in the world.
Teledesic, this "high altitude aircraft, and the "giant high altitude stationary blimp" internet access scheme have appeared in dozens of publications for nearly two years now. For God's sake people, let's drop it until one of these is actually lifting off, and bouncing packets back to people in a usable manner.
A friend of mine owns SkyBurst, a Met Area Network in South Bend, IN that has operated like this "Broadband2Wireless" company - For two years. Very cool technology, downloading at 150k/second sitting at a traffic light. Guess he needs a better publicist. Any investors interested? Not a theory, but 14+ tower wide-wide area net running for quite some time...
Now the system platform needs to be connected to a very fast moving servo controlled aiming system controlled using the galvanic skin response/ musculatory pressure sensing sleeve Boeing is developing to fly aircraft - WITH the final assembly being connected to the most sophisticated, accurate weapons guidance system in the world: A thirteen year old boy with a case of Cherry Coke and Doritos.
When the fire test fails in front of the review board, perhaps he can yell "LAG!!"
Yes, That's true Poligraf... But five years development against Intel's x86 architecture, which goes back what.. 15 years or more, and AMD / Motorola's experience making microprocessors for everything under the sun, including cell phones, ethernet cards, printer engines, and a cornucopia of microcontrollers - Would tend to suggest that they have a better handle on the design/manufacturing/quality controll aspects of bringing a new chip to market.
There is another factor as well; Established companies that already HAVE product in the channel can afford slight delay to assure 2nd generation product performs properly. With Transmeta sellling their first chip, they have no such cash cow allowing them to poke around in the lab for another six months. If Intel's P4 is a dog, while their stock will get knocked around, they aren't going to go out of business if it takes them two quarters to fix it. Nor is Gateway going to stop using Intel processors.
Consider a few things - Transmeta's Crusoe chip is a new product, rushed to market in an amazingly small time frame. The engineering staff of rival chipmakers, eg Intel and AMD, must dwarf Transmeta's talent pool. But then again, size isn't everything. Remember IBM's blunders in the CPU market? Like those space heaters they used to make - Also referred to as the IBM manufactured Cyrix 5x86 and 6x86 processors? Ooh - Oooh, my favorite, the IBM "Blue Lightning" chip they had out during the 486 days - That little 386 processor they had running a 486 instruction set, that got so hot they failed 10% of the time WITH the CPU fan and heatsink.
Intel, AMD and Motorola have been making microprocessors for a very, very long time... Why anyone should be surprised that a Johnny-come-lately has skinned their knee the first time down the block is beyond me.
One other thing - One of the first things people look at when choosing a laptop, at least the die-hard geeks, is the relative power the unit has compared to their desktop. It's not uncommon to purchase laptops with 128+ megs of RAM, P3600 or faster processors, DVD players, 15" displays that are sharp as a CRT, 8 gig hard drives or larger - Point being, MOST people are off the AC juice just a few minutes at a time; they are writing notes in an airport lobby. Assuming most laptops can manage two hours battery time, do we really need that much more? All you NEED to do word processing and check email is a 486, if we put an 18 micron 486 in a laptop with today's technology, you'd get what, five hours?;P
While I'm anxiously awaiting any new Orson Scott Card issue, I've noticed several persons suggesting authors or titles they feel to be of parallel quality with Card's "Ender" series; I'll add my two cents worth!
Do yourselves a favor and check out Christopher Hinz's AWESOME "Paratwa" series! EASILY on the same level as Card, Asimov or Herbert. The three Paratwa titles should occupy space on your sci-fi shelf: Liege Killer, Ash Ock, and The Paratwa, in order. I only wish Hinz, who has not been heard from in YEARS, would write again - If not something new, a continuation of the Paratwa series would be MOST welcome! : )
Claims like this smack only of bold leaps in self-promotion and hype. Considering the number of NEW devices connected to the internet on a daily basis, and the increasing number of sites using dynamically generated content, claims such as "we've mapped every byte on the internet" are insane.
At the heart of these new "Internet Private Investigator" type companies is a desire to develop methodology or technology that is marketable to law enforcement or private companies who have an interest in tracking users down for a number of legal reasons. Whether it's a hate group posting bomb schematics, or a geek programmer reposting DeCSS source code for for the five hundredth time, "THEY" would like to find you.
These companies fail to realize that the persons they are trying to track down, in many cases are better than those doing the tracking. When you have high school kids able to deface NASA web pages, sniff credit card numbers off a Fortune 500 company's server, hijack telnet and ftp sessions, IP spoof, and root clueless ISP's servers to use as jumping-off points, it makes it very easy to stay anonymous.
But if the company in question told investors they had developed technology that enabled them to catch idiots, it wouldn't sizzle, would it.:)
If the government required licencing for anyone able to purchase T1 or greater bandwidth, ala FCC licencing for radio stations - AND, pass a basic certification test verifying they understand essential, basic security measures for the OS they choose to employ, it would make the internet a much more secure (and accountable) place, and give higher professional creditability (and marketability) to the persons holding the licence.
As wireless networking has come into it's own in the last year or two, a small number of pioneering ISP's have begun offering wireless access for home and corporate users. Perhaps I can score a shameless plug for a friend of mine, and give those of you experimenting with wirless a valuable resource to exchange information.
My friend Jack Brewer, owner of MicroVillage Internet in South Bend, IN created their SkyBurst wireless access service a little over a year ago. The service offers internet access to both residential and commercial customers. The technology presently allows throughput from 11-22mbit over a cellular style of overlapping coverage areas via (presently) 19 radio towers covering the Michiana area. At the heart of the operation exists a large number of linux routers.
Presumably, this Slashdot article was dealing with the more pedestrian 2.4 GHz consumer wireless technology for small home LAN's; However many of the wireless adapater manufacturers at the client end offer hardware that overlaps both applications.
If you are an ISP operator or network administrator interested in wireless WAN technology, or are already in the field and want to brainshare, you may wish to visit http://www.skyburst.net for more information.
The International Labor Organization neglected to mention a number of IT-related issues; Let's not forget the horrific impact IT has wrought on American workers, such as:
- Exponentially expanding and diverse employment opportunity
- Skyrocketing salaries for certified and/or proven IT professionals
- Yearly creation of tens of thousands of quality job opportunities including some level of medical benefits and 401k (unlike the "Whopper Flopper" jobs typically included in Presidential campaign figures)
- Work environment that doesn't include high risk of physical injury, sweating profusely, physical exhaustion, working in the environment year-round, blisters and callouses, or dress code including flannel
Please, ILO. Pointing out the job stress felt by Volvo-driving gourmet coffee guzzling Docker-clad cell phone wielding IT professionals who's worries usually boil down to plotting their next salary-increasing job change, and sweating the mortgage on their $220,000 home must have been tough.
We live in an era in which half the worlds' population has still not placed a phone call and twelve year old children are working twelve hour days hacking sugar cane with a dull machete'. Reading about the plight of the United States' IT professionals is absurd.
Slashdot Mirror
My fiance' moved to the US from Sweden about five months ago. With a Masters' degree from one of Europe's most prestigious CompSci/Engineering universities, a Sun java certification, and several years' proven experience with some of Europe's largest IT consulting firms doing SQL programming, PHP/ASP scripting, Java & Linux development - We had one hell of a time finding an employer in the US to sponsor her.
Nearly all of the firms with listings in our area flatly stated that they would not sponsor. Most of them print this in their ads. The reasons are simple:
1. $1,000 sponsorship fee, paid to US Government
2. $1,000 15-day H1B premium processing fee, payable by employee. If you don't chose this option, paperwork takes 3-5 months.
3. $130 filing fee.
4. An absolute blizzard of paperwork. We were unable to find an immigration attorney in our city that even understood the process. (South Bend, Indiana) - We ended up retaining a high-caliber immigration specialist from Houston TX. Their fee? $1,750.
It's safe to say that none but the Fortune 1000 are willing to tackle the expense or have the expertise in handling the daunting forms.
We finally found a local company willing to sponsor her, a local health care facility. They were very excited to get her, offered to hire her on the spot and reimbursed half her expenses. Why? *drumroll* - The position went unfilled for nearly five months as they were unable to find a qualified person locally.
She is most certainly not being taken advantage of, having been offered a salary very much in line with her duties and educational background.
Say what you will about the H1-B, but we can certainly tell you - It's alot harder to get sponsored than you think.
This certainly is a terrific idea! However, working as a network engineer at one of the nation's first widely deployed consumer wireless access companies, I'm all too familiar with the expenses involved in building such a solution.
:(
Ultimately, while playing with the technology and the design of your "NaN" would be fun, we live in a world where bandwidth providers will not accept make-believe money for the pipe(s) to your "NaN" router(s). The issue would quickly become:
1. Who among your neighbors would be willing to shoulder the cost of the bandwidth, AP's, router(s), switch(es), and lend the time and expertise in the installation and configuration of same, and
2. Who is willing to face the inevitable slew of legal and/or licensing challenges in reselling or providing bandwidth for free to the neighbors on your "NaN". Are you willing to pay for a T1 out of your own pocket to feed the bandwidth need? If not, and your neighbors throw monthly contributions into the hat, you face a host of very real-world, non technical legal, tax and business issues.
Please don't misinterpret these points! I think it's a neat idea. However we must remember, regardless of the technology available, ultimately the twin evils of Money and Regulations drive the market; free or otherwise.
If an "Internet Bandwidth Commune" is your goal, don't lose sight of the inescapable truth that somewhere, sometime, eventually SOMEONE will have to pay for it.
Scot
Always enjoyable to see the media "discover" something that's been around for a long while
Here at www.skyburst.net in sleepy South Bend, Indiana we've been doing the exact same thing for similar reasons. This region of the country is a black hole of dark fiber, non-existant or poor cable operator access and hostile CLEC/ILEC's that are not offering DSL OR creating peering arrangements with ISP's to do so. Our Ameritech office here literally will not return phone calls to ANYONE inquiring about DSL.
In traditional media outlets, particularly newspaper and radio, companies can specifically request or be GUARANTEED that advertisements for competing products or services will NOT appear within x-many column inches of newspaper or x-minutes of radio play.
If I were advertising my theoretical car dealership, what is the effectiveness of that ad if a SECOND companies' commercial runs right behind mine? What if they KNEW they could get that slot and intentionally undercut all my sale prices in THEIR ad? I'd cancel my ad run and refuse payment to the station, among other things.
This situation actually happened when I was working at a Northeast-Ohio computer company, when a popular area FM radio station ran OUR ad with a COMPETITOR'S ad right behind it! We actually called the competitor, said "do you know they are doing this?" upon which BOTH of us called the station manager threatening to cancel BOTH ad runs unless they were scheduled at least 3 minutes apart, per their agreement.
This has to be one of the better, shining examples of the "wild west" cowboy cavalier attitude so predominant on the internet running smack into the brick wall of common sense.
Hey, perhaps Microsoft should approach Andover, offer them four times their standard banner rates and plaster WindowsXP ads all over Slashdot.
Hm..The debate seems to be the usefulness of an orbital studio. Considering leading man/leading lady salaries today, paying the soviet space agency one million dollars per head to get a director, photographer + two actors into the "studio" for a week's worth of filming is
The novelty factor is remarkably high. But don't tell me that had Ron Howard, Tom Hanks & Co. shot 30 minutes worth of capsule interiors in the studio that it WOULDN'T have added value to the film. People admire Hank's dedication to his craft when he loses 35 pounds for films like "Castaway" or "Philadelphia"; The pure accuracy of the visuals in a zero-g filmed movie with a cast like that would transcend gadget value, and fall welllllll within today's bloated A-movie budgets.
So Lou Perlman wants to put Superflous Bubblegum Band v2.0 into orbit for a live concert? To haul up 4 prettyboys + camera guy = 5.5, 6 million dollars? Ten million households pay $29 for the pay-per-view, and after it's all said and done - Hey, he still made a ton of money off pure gadget value.
Amazing, how the IT sector, with a much higher than average percentage of agnosts, atheists and downright good old-fashioned nonbelievers, are so quick to jump on Alex's inventions. Inventions that smack of little more than a covered wagon, carnival barker and a crate of snake oil. My elderly mother, who has MS, tried "magnetic therapy" devices (shoe innersole, and shiatsu massager) some time ago. After having witnessed the (complete and utter) lack of usefulness, I firmly believe these devices work in so much that they are extremely effective in seperating the user from $30 of their hard-earned money. What will you people be posting about next? Phrenology? The Scientology aura-reading device?
Yes Dan, but what % of those persons BOUGHT mandrake boxed, and how many downloaded it? RedHat seems to generate most of their income with support contracts, or so I read somewhere.
>:)
Um.. my good buddy Jack over there at SkyBurst internet ( http://www.skyburst.net ) has been doing affordable wireless internet access for businesses and residential customers alike for over two years. What is with all these articles on /. extolling wirless as some Flash-Gordon future technology?! In this case, It's already deployed throughout a giant section of the South Bend / Michiana area. If the idea of downloading MP3's at a red light or at home @ 150k/sec is appealing to you, check it out! Corporate consulting services also available.
Well, to answer the gentleman who said "Athlon 4" was a "stupid marketing ploy", consider - The readership of Slashdot, and persons who assemble their own PC's, period.. Are a far, far smaller percentage of the computer-buying public than the cluebies who buy PC's at Best Buy as though they were $1,000 toaster ovens. Branding is important; It's how THOSE people will remember "Athlon." YOU remember specs, performance - Technical information. THOSE people need a counter to Blue Man Group's P4 commercials. Like.. Stomp hopping around on trash can lids, singing the praise of Athlon Instead.
So is our Moon, but we spent >$1 trillion dollars to send 11 (?) different astronauts, a golf club + Titleist ball, and a $50 million dollar go-kart (which we neglected to bring back.)
Yanno, if you took one flake of dead skin off your arm and slipped it into a scanning electron microcsope, it would look exactly like all of the above photos.
I guess the moral of the story is, if you look at a blob-shaped cumulus cloud hoping to see a giraffe, you will see a giraffe.
The presence of sentient life is easy to spot. Symmetrical placement of objects; Placement or creation of objects/material with straight lines and the presence of (near) perfect circular anything. None of these appear naturally according to any rules we can think of. The wind doesn't stack rocks, vegetation or fuel cells in convenient piles near one's hovel.
Wouldn't it be funny though, if Mars is in fact totally dead (like our moon) but we are stumbling across some OTHER civilation's space exploration program?
Who cares what you or I think, the biggest obstacle this company faces is convincing the automakers in the united states to start installing factory audio head units capable of receiving the "XM" frequencies as well.
And you thought cell phones were a distraction? How many of you reading this actually listen to one complete song on FM radio? Yes, you station-surf constantly, don't you; We all have two minute hamsterlike attention spans. Is having 100 channels to flip through a really fantastic idea?
Well, granted, I suppose once you're on the interstate, FM dies and you are presented with Country OR Western as your choices, I think I'd rather try the 12 digitally broadcast techno channels... Hmm.. XM huh?
Anyone else figured out that it would be potentially possible to distribute entire albums at 44 KHz 16 bit quality this way?
The short-sightedness of elected officials (or humanity at large) is frightening sometimes.
The internet is the medium in question in this article; So what? This is about cultural and social issues, folks.
In the United States, there is a reason states are allowed to pass their own laws. Even within the SAME COUNTRY there are regionalized pockets of persons with differing opinions from the "national average." Nevermind the entire WORLD, with it's dozens (hundreds) of vastly different cultures.
The German government has a throbbing exposed nerve concerning neonazi or nazi era material or propaganda on the internet due their unique obvious historical perspective. Does this mean that a college student in Oregon should be denied the opportunity to study the rise of the Third Reich? If a [flaming idiot] white supremacist in Florida wishes to publish a neo-nazi website on a local ISP who agrees to host the material, doesn't the FIRST AMENDMENT of the UNITED STATES guarantee his or her RIGHT to publish this material? Are we missing something here?!
Had I been born in a different corner of the world, I'd probably (if I had net access) be composing this while sporting a stylish 2 foot long PENIS SHEATH with my buttcheeks flapping in the wind as I strode off. In my society this would be no more unusual than wearing DOCKERS. Does this mean my smiling picture on my homepage should set off your NET NANNY? Would it be PORNOGRAPHY in YOUR COUNTRY?
Once again, nearsighted politicians have ignored common sense. Even given the broad diversity of culture, within the Human Experience there is a framework for agreeing on what is generally 'right or wrong'. Someone r00t1ng your webserver and defacing it is most likely ALREADY illegal in the G-8 nations. This legislation would appear to open an entire CRATE of ethnic/religious/political/cultural worms that NOONE will be satisfied with.
Let the Germans shut down nazi/neo-nazi sites in their own country or prosecute persons owning this material in GERMANY.
Let the Americans prosecute persons posessing child pornography. If the content is legal in the country of origin, who are we to go storming after their ISP's?
For god's sake, someone dig up Ben Franklin and clone him; We need more humanists in the world.
Schwarzenegger himself, on an appearance on the "Arsenio Hall Show" during it's last season claimed the name means "Black Plowman".
Teledesic, this "high altitude aircraft, and the "giant high altitude stationary blimp" internet access scheme have appeared in dozens of publications for nearly two years now. For God's sake people, let's drop it until one of these is actually lifting off, and bouncing packets back to people in a usable manner.
One of the sales guys at Best Buy has a Beowulf cluster running on their A/V display wall?
A friend of mine owns SkyBurst, a Met Area Network in South Bend, IN that has operated like this "Broadband2Wireless" company - For two years. Very cool technology, downloading at 150k/second sitting at a traffic light. Guess he needs a better publicist. Any investors interested? Not a theory, but 14+ tower wide-wide area net running for quite some time...
Shameless Plug: www.skyburst.net
All your base are belong to us.
Now the system platform needs to be connected to a very fast moving servo controlled aiming system controlled using the galvanic skin response/ musculatory pressure sensing sleeve Boeing is developing to fly aircraft - WITH the final assembly being connected to the most sophisticated, accurate weapons guidance system in the world: A thirteen year old boy with a case of Cherry Coke and Doritos.
When the fire test fails in front of the review board, perhaps he can yell "LAG!!"
Yes, That's true Poligraf... But five years development against Intel's x86 architecture, which goes back what.. 15 years or more, and AMD / Motorola's experience making microprocessors for everything under the sun, including cell phones, ethernet cards, printer engines, and a cornucopia of microcontrollers - Would tend to suggest that they have a better handle on the design/manufacturing/quality controll aspects of bringing a new chip to market. There is another factor as well; Established companies that already HAVE product in the channel can afford slight delay to assure 2nd generation product performs properly. With Transmeta sellling their first chip, they have no such cash cow allowing them to poke around in the lab for another six months. If Intel's P4 is a dog, while their stock will get knocked around, they aren't going to go out of business if it takes them two quarters to fix it. Nor is Gateway going to stop using Intel processors.
Consider a few things - Transmeta's Crusoe chip is a new product, rushed to market in an amazingly small time frame. The engineering staff of rival chipmakers, eg Intel and AMD, must dwarf Transmeta's talent pool. But then again, size isn't everything. Remember IBM's blunders in the CPU market? Like those space heaters they used to make - Also referred to as the IBM manufactured Cyrix 5x86 and 6x86 processors? Ooh - Oooh, my favorite, the IBM "Blue Lightning" chip they had out during the 486 days - That little 386 processor they had running a 486 instruction set, that got so hot they failed 10% of the time WITH the CPU fan and heatsink.
;P
Intel, AMD and Motorola have been making microprocessors for a very, very long time... Why anyone should be surprised that a Johnny-come-lately has skinned their knee the first time down the block is beyond me.
One other thing - One of the first things people look at when choosing a laptop, at least the die-hard geeks, is the relative power the unit has compared to their desktop. It's not uncommon to purchase laptops with 128+ megs of RAM, P3600 or faster processors, DVD players, 15" displays that are sharp as a CRT, 8 gig hard drives or larger - Point being, MOST people are off the AC juice just a few minutes at a time; they are writing notes in an airport lobby. Assuming most laptops can manage two hours battery time, do we really need that much more? All you NEED to do word processing and check email is a 486, if we put an 18 micron 486 in a laptop with today's technology, you'd get what, five hours?
While I'm anxiously awaiting any new Orson Scott Card issue, I've noticed several persons suggesting authors or titles they feel to be of parallel quality with Card's "Ender" series; I'll add my two cents worth! Do yourselves a favor and check out Christopher Hinz's AWESOME "Paratwa" series! EASILY on the same level as Card, Asimov or Herbert. The three Paratwa titles should occupy space on your sci-fi shelf: Liege Killer, Ash Ock, and The Paratwa, in order. I only wish Hinz, who has not been heard from in YEARS, would write again - If not something new, a continuation of the Paratwa series would be MOST welcome! : )
Claims like this smack only of bold leaps in self-promotion and hype. Considering the number of NEW devices connected to the internet on a daily basis, and the increasing number of sites using dynamically generated content, claims such as "we've mapped every byte on the internet" are insane.
At the heart of these new "Internet Private Investigator" type companies is a desire to develop methodology or technology that is marketable to law enforcement or private companies who have an interest in tracking users down for a number of legal reasons. Whether it's a hate group posting bomb schematics, or a geek programmer reposting DeCSS source code for for the five hundredth time, "THEY" would like to find you.
These companies fail to realize that the persons they are trying to track down, in many cases are better than those doing the tracking. When you have high school kids able to deface NASA web pages, sniff credit card numbers off a Fortune 500 company's server, hijack telnet and ftp sessions, IP spoof, and root clueless ISP's servers to use as jumping-off points, it makes it very easy to stay anonymous.
But if the company in question told investors they had developed technology that enabled them to catch idiots, it wouldn't sizzle, would it.
If the government required licencing for anyone able to purchase T1 or greater bandwidth, ala FCC licencing for radio stations - AND, pass a basic certification test verifying they understand essential, basic security measures for the OS they choose to employ, it would make the internet a much more secure (and accountable) place, and give higher professional creditability (and marketability) to the persons holding the licence.
As wireless networking has come into it's own in the last year or two, a small number of pioneering ISP's have begun offering wireless access for home and corporate users. Perhaps I can score a shameless plug for a friend of mine, and give those of you experimenting with wirless a valuable resource to exchange information.
My friend Jack Brewer, owner of MicroVillage Internet in South Bend, IN created their SkyBurst wireless access service a little over a year ago. The service offers internet access to both residential and commercial customers. The technology presently allows throughput from 11-22mbit over a cellular style of overlapping coverage areas via (presently) 19 radio towers covering the Michiana area. At the heart of the operation exists a large number of linux routers.
Presumably, this Slashdot article was dealing with the more pedestrian 2.4 GHz consumer wireless technology for small home LAN's; However many of the wireless adapater manufacturers at the client end offer hardware that overlaps both applications.
If you are an ISP operator or network administrator interested in wireless WAN technology, or are already in the field and want to brainshare, you may wish to visit http://www.skyburst.net for more information.
Cheers,
Scot
The International Labor Organization neglected to mention a number of IT-related issues; Let's not forget the horrific impact IT has wrought on American workers, such as:
- Exponentially expanding and diverse employment opportunity
- Skyrocketing salaries for certified and/or proven IT professionals
- Yearly creation of tens of thousands of quality job opportunities including some level of medical benefits and 401k (unlike the "Whopper Flopper" jobs typically included in Presidential campaign figures)
- Work environment that doesn't include high risk of physical injury, sweating profusely, physical exhaustion, working in the environment year-round, blisters and callouses, or dress code including flannel
Please, ILO. Pointing out the job stress felt by Volvo-driving gourmet coffee guzzling Docker-clad cell phone wielding IT professionals who's worries usually boil down to plotting their next salary-increasing job change, and sweating the mortgage on their $220,000 home must have been tough.
We live in an era in which half the worlds' population has still not placed a phone call and twelve year old children are working twelve hour days hacking sugar cane with a dull machete'. Reading about the plight of the United States' IT professionals is absurd.
If you can't take the heat..