Probably not in the REAL world where noise / LOS issues cuts the actual effective throughput of N down significantly. Worse (as stated above) when the signal decides to renegotiate and you get zero bandwidth for about 5 seconds at a time.
And what about the cable TO the access point?
Wireless throughput isn't useful if your testing is a laptop 5 feet from the AP. Try real conditions - fluorescent lighting all over, steel studs in walls, file cabinets, and wireless signals bouncing all over hell like a pinball in an arcade game.
And again, don't forget the phone cables which have the same problems.
The cost of redoing the network is a lot more than an exterminator. Once you have the primary rats gone, keeping up with them (new rats) is a lot easier and less expensive.
Considering he is using fiber cables, wireless probably isn't a very viable option. While you may be able to use wireless to do LOS point to point between buildings, it seems the problem is INSIDE anyway, so no help there. Most likely the cables that are getting chewed include voice lines. So, no, wireless is not a panacea. Even in my home, due to noise issues, my laptop will occasionally lose sync to an AP that is physically 10 feet away and in view.
So yeah - get better exterminators. Get the vermin problem solved not only because of the cable, but rats running all over the business just isn't a good thing.
Maybe you haven't been paying attention to the world around you. In this new market economy, one that is STILL going down hill fast, people ARE going to be looking at alternatives to Windows 7 Very Very hard as the bigger price just makes it that much less affordable.
While this article is about home basic, look at businesses - which have NOT adopted Vista (something like 25% adoption - not good.) There are initiatives all over the place looking at how they can save a portion of their licensing fees for non-critical desktops. Will businesses switch 100% to linux? Oh - I seriously doubt that too. But a large number could migrate a large percentage and save millions.
Case in point, looking at the software used by a rather large bank, they have already gone mostly thin client - running web portals and terminal services for all but a handful of unconverted apps. Very little left tying them to Windows "on every machine". It is probably a year away from a total conversion. Ditto for health care providers - I'm seeing the same thing there.
heh! I posted that quote before I saw yours... And it is dead on. (Yours is more accurate - I was going from memory:-)
It's funny that MS hasn't figured this out yet. But they, like the rest of the world, are going through some shrinking (layoffs) and are scrambling to find a way to recover that revenue. This isn't a good way of doing it however - charge more for optional software - not the base. If you squeeze the base too much, you push people out of your platform (and get NO additional sales of add-on products) and grow the market for alternatives. It's a downward spiral that is not smart.
You just go ahead and file that lawsuit. See how far ya get sparky. Hope it's televised so we can laugh at you as you make a fool out of yourself in front of a judge.
Holy shit. In other words, Obama can do no wrong... Like the fact that he, like his good buddy Bush, still supports warrant-less domestic spying on Americans and granting immunity to the telcos - but it's OK *NOW*, he is a Democrat! And Bush was the devil!
Here is a giant freakin cluebat. Obama is NOT the black Jesus Christ come to save the world. Don't get me wrong, our other option for Pres. was no better, but decisions like this (DTV delay) are just fucking stupid, and the majority of congress support this stupidity.
Now there are many good reasons for supporting Obama and that's FINE! This, however, isn't one of them.
Case in point - the buggy graphics driver for my 3 year old laptop (which was top of the line at the time, 1920x1200 display and all) hasn't been updated since the laptop was released. Unfortunately the generic ATI driver for it refuses to install and am at the mercy of the laptop vendor who isn't interested in updating it. I'm just fucked on Windows. I'm one voice. They already have their money from me, and could care less.
This laptop is still very very serviceable - everything (except for the buggy video drivers) works fine and it is plenty fast - I can't see replacing it for another couple years unless it breaks.
What this is a call for is for laptop vendors and graphics chip companies to really get their shit together and stop doing "special" shit for ONE model of laptop for example. I SHOULD be able to use the generic (and still maintained) driver.
In the case of the FA and Linux, the issue is that this "open source" driver really isn't as it has these binary blobs in them that make it impossible for the community to take things in their own hands and fix it. It's a VERY simple problem that "may" be impossible to fix because Intel probably licensed some proprietary patented software / technologies that are in those blobs. That puts the core of the driver still in a closed source jail.
I mean, look at this. It's clearly Apple's IP. It's clearly a new invention.
Is it? Or is it a natural progression, obvious to anyone in the field? We've had touch screens for well over 20 years. Isn't it obvious that you would eventually handle MORE than one touch? Gestures to do things is also not novel, as we could drag scroll bars and and whatnot and have had mouse gestures for years.
But the patent office doesn't give a damn about anything obvious. Even the smallest little thing is "wildly new and highly innovative that nobody could EVER POSSIBLY conceive of - OMG this man is a FRACKING GENIUS!!!"
IMHO, the patent office should be granting only about 0.01% of the patents they currently grant. All the business process patents should be immediately null and void too, along with all software patents. That would jump start this economy too.
Yes. Spot on here. I want anyone to be able to use the physical wires. Give me true freedom of choice in my SERVICE provider without the monopoly provider having all the control and leasing out space at rates that don't allow others to compete on a level playing field.
Any grants / funding should be spent on the physical infrastructure to allow faster technologies to be rolled out, and to serve areas that have no broadband at all.
The thing is, we need this to compete in the global economy. we started out ahead of the pack and now we are Way behind. This is about much more than faster torrents, this is the ability to offer new business services on the net. Everything else is a bonus.
Actually, setting it up wasn't that bad. I already use a debian box (been using debian since before Ubuntu existed) for my internet gateway that sits in the basement. I bought a Digium analog FXS/FXO card (old style) with 4 ports on it for my two phone lines, and two extensions. I also have some old Cisco ATA's I bought long ago to provide 4 additional extensions. I actually don't use all the old analog ports since I got a couple Polycom VoIP desk phones (which have AWESOME speaker phones.) Again, I initially installed Asterisk long ago before there were distro packages, so I compiled from source. To be honest, it wasn't trivial (especially getting the ata's working) but not hard either. Certainly no harder than installing apache from source and configuring it.
Today it's stupid simple as the documentation for Asterisk is WAY better, and the configuration tools are far easier. Distro packages make Asterisk an apt-get install away, and there are pre-setup CD installs of asterisk available.
Originally (years ago) I had some issues with echo but modern code has totally solved that problem.
Since my install is so old, I can't really give you the perspective of what it would be like for someone new to it, I just know it's soooo much easier now than it used to be.
No.... What we need are callerID numbers that are always transmitted and accurate. We need carriers to be held liable for bogus caller ID info transmitted on their networks. No exceptions.
This makes it a little harder for voip termination providers, but it can and needs to be done. Make it a criminal penalty to knowingly use bogus or forged callerID (allowing the loophole to use a number that BELONGS to you.)
Currently, (and I've mentioned this several times in the past) I use Asterisk for my phone system. In fact, I've been using it for over 5 years now (It is ROCK SOLID)
I've also had a few simple rules setup. First, I have a white list of close family and friends (those calls always go through, with callerID name re-writing so I see it's Bill and not "Wireless Caller".) Second, local calls are allowed during waking hours to get right through. At night, they have to press 1 to leave a message or press 5 to ring through. Third, tollfree numbers and NO callerID ALWAYS have to press 5 to ring through. Finally, the blacklist which just gives a disconnect tone sequence and phone company like message that the number is disconnected:-)
What have these rules done for me?
First, telemarketing calls are all blocked - along with charity solicitations and political crap. The sole exception (due to my rule set) was a couple calls from LOCAL political volunteers (I actually don't mind those - at least they are HUMAN.)
Second, wrong numbers in the middle of the night totally stopped.
I have my phone back. I can have dinner in peace. I sleep at night!
They really want MORE than that because Opera is cross platform. By leaving all those "windows only" things in there, it doesn't require sites to rewrite their IE Only apps to be AJAX / open apps. Opera would really like to be the browser of choice on netbooks, mobile handsets, etc. which are a lot less likely to have those Windows-only components.
Enterprise users with IE apps won't be affected - they will install IE anyway.
That said, the market (both consumer and enterprise) is going to be pushing for sites to not use IE specific crap anyway (due to mobile usage) long before the EC gets off its duff and actually does anything.
Nice anecdote, but all that says is that the IT people in your company don't have a clue. Once upon a time, IT people were just as clueless about Windows / PC's. It's sad really - people call themselves professionals and then behave like that, refusing to educate themselves (If you are not CONSTANTLY educating yourself in IT, you will very very quickly become a dinosaur.)
Um, they have exactly that... The PP was just being flamebait. Of COURSE you wouldn't want lights being turned off on you when you are in the room.
But here is the deal.... You really don't want someone else telling you when you can run your own stuff. What you want is things like "we have a peak load time, do what you can to conserve" and YOUR controller starts taking measures to do extra conservation based on your individual needs. Likewise, "we have a surplus, rates are lower right now" so run the dishwasher, etc. You can also do some time-sliced sync of compressors (not just fridges, but AC units too, but if you look at this on a grid-wide basis it's going to even out anyway. Better is to let your fridge warm a couple extra degrees (if your situation allows) during peak load times (not running AT ALL for a while.)
Going forward, we all need to do what we can to save / manage energy more efficiently. Let's use alternative energy sources "green power" to cut down on legacy power generation, cutting pollution, while at the same time cutting energy consumption to reduce need for legacy power even more.
Why yes, yes it is pitched at residential AND commercial sites. This is what "Lonworks" from Echelon is all about - energy management. The technology wasn't designed for just fridges, it was designed for EVERYTHING. Lighting, heating/cooling, dishwashers, laundry, etc. With its 64 bit addressing, it is intended to allow everything to communicate, and peer communications is a big part of it (as is negotiating when to "run".)
Anyway, these researchers should talk to Echelon. They solved this problem 12 years ago.
The second answer is the correct one, but it's not a "spam" filter. It's just a filter. Any competent email admin would have setup access controls on a large list like this.
Exchange, which they use, has built-in access controls for distribution lists. Unfortunately they weren't enabled (Doh!!)
It doesn't need to be secret if there are controls on who can send messages to the list. It is so trivial to do for any competent email admin no matter what software they use.
... Depending on where, exactly, you live of course. I get one broadcast station without a rooftop, or 5 with it. With analog, you can get a fuzzy picture, and nearly always get sound. With digital, you either get everything nearly perfectly, or you get nothing (nothing includes picture freezes and no audio.)
The issue with digital is that people that used to get fuzzy but watchable stations now may get nothing.
As for the converter box issue, the whole situation is partially caused by the fact that retailers were allowed to sell analog only sets if they were under a certain size... And larger sets the requirement was only recent (just a few years.)
Also, converter boxes suck. Yet another remote to mess with (remember the users - those who can't handle programming an all-in-one.)
The FA doesn't say that it would wipe out 1/2 to 2/3's of the US. It says that it would blanket as much as 1/2 with ash. Those are two very different things. It would be very nasty though, no doubt about it. The eastern seaboard of the US, where most of the population is, would probably not be burning / melting, sorry. Ditto for Canada with populations mostly on the far coasts, nowhere close.
Actually, time warner cable sucks in maine - even business class service. Latency is higher than DSL (adding a MINIMUM of 30ms) and bandwith varies widely depending on the time of day.
Verizon DSL was VERY consistent. 1.5M/384K could be counted on 24/7. That's what you got all the time (I had it for 4 years.) In those 4 years, the ONLY outage I had was when my phone line ripped off the house in an ice storm.
Cable can be 10M/2M (business account,) but can also be 128K/2M (Yeah, that's 128K down...) with 300ms ping times to Verizon's 1.5M/75ms to the same site at the same time. I do very regular automated testing of connectivity (ping monitoring) and bandwidth. TWC has had about 15 outages in the past 4 months, most small (30 mins or less) but two lasted half a day.
Bottom line with Time Warner Cable service: You get more bandwith MOST of the time, but it's not reliable or consistent. If you need reliability and consistency, you need DSL or better.
You are spot-on here. This is like making a great programmer "VP of Engineering." Who here has seen that happen time and time again and seen that person be a horrible VP... Hands??? The two skill sets are TOTALLY different. In fact, it is a VERY VERY poor decision because it is a WASTE of a brain! Instead, you put someone in that position that is politically savvy and use this guy as the top adviser to the Energy Secretary.
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Sorry - should be Wireless throughput TESTING isn't useful...
Probably not in the REAL world where noise / LOS issues cuts the actual effective throughput of N down significantly. Worse (as stated above) when the signal decides to renegotiate and you get zero bandwidth for about 5 seconds at a time.
And what about the cable TO the access point?
Wireless throughput isn't useful if your testing is a laptop 5 feet from the AP. Try real conditions - fluorescent lighting all over, steel studs in walls, file cabinets, and wireless signals bouncing all over hell like a pinball in an arcade game.
And again, don't forget the phone cables which have the same problems.
The cost of redoing the network is a lot more than an exterminator. Once you have the primary rats gone, keeping up with them (new rats) is a lot easier and less expensive.
Considering he is using fiber cables, wireless probably isn't a very viable option. While you may be able to use wireless to do LOS point to point between buildings, it seems the problem is INSIDE anyway, so no help there. Most likely the cables that are getting chewed include voice lines. So, no, wireless is not a panacea. Even in my home, due to noise issues, my laptop will occasionally lose sync to an AP that is physically 10 feet away and in view.
So yeah - get better exterminators. Get the vermin problem solved not only because of the cable, but rats running all over the business just isn't a good thing.
Maybe you haven't been paying attention to the world around you. In this new market economy, one that is STILL going down hill fast, people ARE going to be looking at alternatives to Windows 7 Very Very hard as the bigger price just makes it that much less affordable.
While this article is about home basic, look at businesses - which have NOT adopted Vista (something like 25% adoption - not good.) There are initiatives all over the place looking at how they can save a portion of their licensing fees for non-critical desktops. Will businesses switch 100% to linux? Oh - I seriously doubt that too. But a large number could migrate a large percentage and save millions.
Case in point, looking at the software used by a rather large bank, they have already gone mostly thin client - running web portals and terminal services for all but a handful of unconverted apps. Very little left tying them to Windows "on every machine". It is probably a year away from a total conversion. Ditto for health care providers - I'm seeing the same thing there.
heh! I posted that quote before I saw yours... And it is dead on. (Yours is more accurate - I was going from memory :-)
It's funny that MS hasn't figured this out yet. But they, like the rest of the world, are going through some shrinking (layoffs) and are scrambling to find a way to recover that revenue. This isn't a good way of doing it however - charge more for optional software - not the base. If you squeeze the base too much, you push people out of your platform (and get NO additional sales of add-on products) and grow the market for alternatives. It's a downward spiral that is not smart.
the more systems will slip through your fingers. (mostly a quote from Star Wars, 1978.) MS hasn't figured this out yet.
You just go ahead and file that lawsuit. See how far ya get sparky. Hope it's televised so we can laugh at you as you make a fool out of yourself in front of a judge.
Holy shit. In other words, Obama can do no wrong... Like the fact that he, like his good buddy Bush, still supports warrant-less domestic spying on Americans and granting immunity to the telcos - but it's OK *NOW*, he is a Democrat! And Bush was the devil!
Here is a giant freakin cluebat. Obama is NOT the black Jesus Christ come to save the world. Don't get me wrong, our other option for Pres. was no better, but decisions like this (DTV delay) are just fucking stupid, and the majority of congress support this stupidity.
Now there are many good reasons for supporting Obama and that's FINE! This, however, isn't one of them.
Partially true.
Case in point - the buggy graphics driver for my 3 year old laptop (which was top of the line at the time, 1920x1200 display and all) hasn't been updated since the laptop was released. Unfortunately the generic ATI driver for it refuses to install and am at the mercy of the laptop vendor who isn't interested in updating it. I'm just fucked on Windows. I'm one voice. They already have their money from me, and could care less.
This laptop is still very very serviceable - everything (except for the buggy video drivers) works fine and it is plenty fast - I can't see replacing it for another couple years unless it breaks.
What this is a call for is for laptop vendors and graphics chip companies to really get their shit together and stop doing "special" shit for ONE model of laptop for example. I SHOULD be able to use the generic (and still maintained) driver.
In the case of the FA and Linux, the issue is that this "open source" driver really isn't as it has these binary blobs in them that make it impossible for the community to take things in their own hands and fix it. It's a VERY simple problem that "may" be impossible to fix because Intel probably licensed some proprietary patented software / technologies that are in those blobs. That puts the core of the driver still in a closed source jail.
I mean, look at this. It's clearly Apple's IP. It's clearly a new invention.
Is it? Or is it a natural progression, obvious to anyone in the field?
We've had touch screens for well over 20 years. Isn't it obvious that you would eventually handle MORE than one touch? Gestures to do things is also not novel, as we could drag scroll bars and and whatnot and have had mouse gestures for years.
But the patent office doesn't give a damn about anything obvious. Even the smallest little thing is "wildly new and highly innovative that nobody could EVER POSSIBLY conceive of - OMG this man is a FRACKING GENIUS!!!"
IMHO, the patent office should be granting only about 0.01% of the patents they currently grant. All the business process patents should be immediately null and void too, along with all software patents. That would jump start this economy too.
Yes. Spot on here. I want anyone to be able to use the physical wires. Give me true freedom of choice in my SERVICE provider without the monopoly provider having all the control and leasing out space at rates that don't allow others to compete on a level playing field.
Any grants / funding should be spent on the physical infrastructure to allow faster technologies to be rolled out, and to serve areas that have no broadband at all.
The thing is, we need this to compete in the global economy. we started out ahead of the pack and now we are Way behind. This is about much more than faster torrents, this is the ability to offer new business services on the net. Everything else is a bonus.
Actually, setting it up wasn't that bad. I already use a debian box (been using debian since before Ubuntu existed) for my internet gateway that sits in the basement. I bought a Digium analog FXS/FXO card (old style) with 4 ports on it for my two phone lines, and two extensions. I also have some old Cisco ATA's I bought long ago to provide 4 additional extensions. I actually don't use all the old analog ports since I got a couple Polycom VoIP desk phones (which have AWESOME speaker phones.) Again, I initially installed Asterisk long ago before there were distro packages, so I compiled from source. To be honest, it wasn't trivial (especially getting the ata's working) but not hard either. Certainly no harder than installing apache from source and configuring it.
Today it's stupid simple as the documentation for Asterisk is WAY better, and the configuration tools are far easier. Distro packages make Asterisk an apt-get install away, and there are pre-setup CD installs of asterisk available.
Originally (years ago) I had some issues with echo but modern code has totally solved that problem.
Since my install is so old, I can't really give you the perspective of what it would be like for someone new to it, I just know it's soooo much easier now than it used to be.
No.... What we need are callerID numbers that are always transmitted and accurate. We need carriers to be held liable for bogus caller ID info transmitted on their networks. No exceptions.
This makes it a little harder for voip termination providers, but it can and needs to be done. Make it a criminal penalty to knowingly use bogus or forged callerID (allowing the loophole to use a number that BELONGS to you.)
Currently, (and I've mentioned this several times in the past) I use Asterisk for my phone system. In fact, I've been using it for over 5 years now (It is ROCK SOLID)
I've also had a few simple rules setup. First, I have a white list of close family and friends (those calls always go through, with callerID name re-writing so I see it's Bill and not "Wireless Caller".) Second, local calls are allowed during waking hours to get right through. At night, they have to press 1 to leave a message or press 5 to ring through. Third, tollfree numbers and NO callerID ALWAYS have to press 5 to ring through. Finally, the blacklist which just gives a disconnect tone sequence and phone company like message that the number is disconnected :-)
What have these rules done for me?
First, telemarketing calls are all blocked - along with charity solicitations and political crap. The sole exception (due to my rule set) was a couple calls from LOCAL political volunteers (I actually don't mind those - at least they are HUMAN.)
Second, wrong numbers in the middle of the night totally stopped.
I have my phone back. I can have dinner in peace. I sleep at night!
They really want MORE than that because Opera is cross platform. By leaving all those "windows only" things in there, it doesn't require sites to rewrite their IE Only apps to be AJAX / open apps. Opera would really like to be the browser of choice on netbooks, mobile handsets, etc. which are a lot less likely to have those Windows-only components.
Enterprise users with IE apps won't be affected - they will install IE anyway.
That said, the market (both consumer and enterprise) is going to be pushing for sites to not use IE specific crap anyway (due to mobile usage) long before the EC gets off its duff and actually does anything.
Nice anecdote, but all that says is that the IT people in your company don't have a clue. Once upon a time, IT people were just as clueless about Windows / PC's. It's sad really - people call themselves professionals and then behave like that, refusing to educate themselves (If you are not CONSTANTLY educating yourself in IT, you will very very quickly become a dinosaur.)
Considering the cost of wireless equipment, it may be the best option though and it is obviously something he did NOT think of....
Um, they have exactly that... The PP was just being flamebait. Of COURSE you wouldn't want lights being turned off on you when you are in the room.
But here is the deal.... You really don't want someone else telling you when you can run your own stuff. What you want is things like "we have a peak load time, do what you can to conserve" and YOUR controller starts taking measures to do extra conservation based on your individual needs. Likewise, "we have a surplus, rates are lower right now" so run the dishwasher, etc. You can also do some time-sliced sync of compressors (not just fridges, but AC units too, but if you look at this on a grid-wide basis it's going to even out anyway. Better is to let your fridge warm a couple extra degrees (if your situation allows) during peak load times (not running AT ALL for a while.)
Going forward, we all need to do what we can to save / manage energy more efficiently. Let's use alternative energy sources "green power" to cut down on legacy power generation, cutting pollution, while at the same time cutting energy consumption to reduce need for legacy power even more.
Why yes, yes it is pitched at residential AND commercial sites. This is what "Lonworks" from Echelon is all about - energy management. The technology wasn't designed for just fridges, it was designed for EVERYTHING. Lighting, heating/cooling, dishwashers, laundry, etc. With its 64 bit addressing, it is intended to allow everything to communicate, and peer communications is a big part of it (as is negotiating when to "run".)
Anyway, these researchers should talk to Echelon. They solved this problem 12 years ago.
The second answer is the correct one, but it's not a "spam" filter. It's just a filter. Any competent email admin would have setup access controls on a large list like this.
Exchange, which they use, has built-in access controls for distribution lists. Unfortunately they weren't enabled (Doh!!)
It doesn't need to be secret if there are controls on who can send messages to the list. It is so trivial to do for any competent email admin no matter what software they use.
... Depending on where, exactly, you live of course. I get one broadcast station without a rooftop, or 5 with it. With analog, you can get a fuzzy picture, and nearly always get sound. With digital, you either get everything nearly perfectly, or you get nothing (nothing includes picture freezes and no audio.)
The issue with digital is that people that used to get fuzzy but watchable stations now may get nothing.
As for the converter box issue, the whole situation is partially caused by the fact that retailers were allowed to sell analog only sets if they were under a certain size... And larger sets the requirement was only recent (just a few years.)
Also, converter boxes suck. Yet another remote to mess with (remember the users - those who can't handle programming an all-in-one.)
The FA doesn't say that it would wipe out 1/2 to 2/3's of the US. It says that it would blanket as much as 1/2 with ash. Those are two very different things. It would be very nasty though, no doubt about it. The eastern seaboard of the US, where most of the population is, would probably not be burning / melting, sorry. Ditto for Canada with populations mostly on the far coasts, nowhere close.
Actually, time warner cable sucks in maine - even business class service. Latency is higher than DSL (adding a MINIMUM of 30ms) and bandwith varies widely depending on the time of day.
Verizon DSL was VERY consistent. 1.5M/384K could be counted on 24/7. That's what you got all the time (I had it for 4 years.) In those 4 years, the ONLY outage I had was when my phone line ripped off the house in an ice storm.
Cable can be 10M/2M (business account,) but can also be 128K/2M (Yeah, that's 128K down...) with 300ms ping times to Verizon's 1.5M/75ms to the same site at the same time. I do very regular automated testing of connectivity (ping monitoring) and bandwidth. TWC has had about 15 outages in the past 4 months, most small (30 mins or less) but two lasted half a day.
Bottom line with Time Warner Cable service: You get more bandwith MOST of the time, but it's not reliable or consistent. If you need reliability and consistency, you need DSL or better.
You are spot-on here. This is like making a great programmer "VP of Engineering." Who here has seen that happen time and time again and seen that person be a horrible VP... Hands??? The two skill sets are TOTALLY different. In fact, it is a VERY VERY poor decision because it is a WASTE of a brain! Instead, you put someone in that position that is politically savvy and use this guy as the top adviser to the Energy Secretary.
4. A $2M tool belt