When we moved into our new house, the last couple had PrimeStar (one meter dish complete with lnb and receiver), wireless digital cable (from BellSouth, now defunct; 28db gain yagi, 2.4 ghz) and TimeWarner cable. I kept the cable. Everything else is in my shed.
If you'll pay shipping and a token finder's fee, you're welcome to the dish, lnb and receiver.
When first developing our NT domain structure, the working group had a very high level 'Universal Resource Domain' as the starting point. All the users would be in that circle. Of course, the corporate name has to be slapped on everything we do. Thus, it was named the 'Tribune Universal Resource Domain'. It lasted for a few months as that until we did the final diagrams for the management group. Since there was little room, we cut it down to TURD. Needless to say, the name was changed. (Unfortunately, the NT domain structure stayed.)
When taking a class on IBM's AIX clustering system, HACMP (High Availability Clustered Muli-Processing), I came across the acronym DGSP. The IBM instructor didn't know what it stood for. (Functionally, DGSP is a system scram when things are so hosed up that the node is better down than up. It happens when one node can't talk to another node in the cluster.)
A few months latter, I was taking the advanced HACMP course at CLAM, the company that actually wrote HACMP for IBM, and asked about DGSP. They were able to explain that DGSP stands for 'Die Gravy Sucking Pig'. In some versions of HACMP you can strings a binary and find that for yourself.
IBM takes itself way too seriously, however, so gravy sucking pigs would never go over in their offical documentation. So, if you trudge through their updated documentation, you'll see that they say DGSP stands for 'Diagnostic Group Shutdown Partition'. That, by the way, makes substantially less sense than Die Gravy Sucking Pig.
InitZero
Re:Scientology knows how to manipulate Google
on
Search Engine Payola
·
· Score: 2, Troll
Anybody with half a brain already knows all they need to about Scientology...
Correction: Anyone with half a brain probably already IS a scientologist.
Co-location is cheap and rock solid. I have
hosted with three different companies in the last
seven years and have been happy with all of them.
DSL and Cable -- even with the best provider -- aren't the same thing as living in a data center. You house doesn't have a couple of T3s. You house might have a UPS and air conditioning but I doubt it has a diesel generator and a fire
supression system (other than your garden hose).
Besides that, for the cost of a DSL line with a static IP address (you wouldn't really think of
trying this with a dynamic IP, would you?), you
could get co-location on a fat pipe.
Right now, I'm co-locating 1U with Vortech Hosting out of Orlando. It's less than half a
mile from where I work. They charge no setup fee and just $50 a month and that includes 10 gig of transfer on a pair of T3s. I can have as many IP addresses as I'd like so long as 80% are in use.
Yes, it is technically possible to host on the
end of a residential cable or DSL line but if your
time and sanity mean anything to you, don't do it.
Find a nice co-location company and hire them.
'Acceptance Period' with a much larger company for the purpose of determining if they want to license the source code and intellectual property of our main product.
Contrary to the majority Slashdot opinion, I
wouldn't worry too much about the deal. Get a good
lawyer who does this sort of work exclusively and
you will be just fine.
45 days isn't all that long either. We (a
Fortune 500 company) often get hardware and
software for months before we make up our mind.
(More than once, we had Cisco gear on loan for so
long the model has been discontinued or replaced
before we got around to approving it for
purchase.)
When viewing source, the company viewing it is
almost always in the more dangerous position. Once
they see your code, should they every come up with
a similar application, they will have to jump
through hoops to prove it isn't based on your
code. That can be very expensive.
Usually when I do this sort of review I'm
looking for clean, well-commented code and good
overall documentation. I am not a programmer by
trade so I'm generally not evaluating the code
itself but the overall maintainability.
Buying code from a company as small as you seem is dangerous. Often times, there are only a couple programmers who really know the application. Should they get run over by a truck
or leave the company, I want to make sure that the
code is clean enough that someone else (either in
your company or mine) can pick up the torch and
keep my business running.
It's not enough to have an excellent product
today. I want to know that the product can change
with our needs. That's the real reason I want to
see the code and documentation as well as the
finished product.
In summary, get a good lawyer and relax. This
is common practice and a lawyer who has done it
before will keep you from getting screwed.
> Any chance you could post your script or a link to your script?
Ugly as sin but fully-functional...
for I in `fgrep ">... User unknown"/var/log/maillog.1 | awk '{print $7}' | cut -d "@" -f 1 | cut -c2- | sort -u`
do
echo "$I: uce@ftc.gov,spamrecycle@chooseyourmail.com" >>/etc/mail/aliases
done
newaliases
Run the above from cron after your [daily|weekly|monthly] maillog rotation. The only danger is that duplicates might show up in aliases. You can fix that by doing a 'sort -u' on the entire list.
the FTC recommends that you forward all of your spam to uce@ftc.gov
Each week, a script searches my/var/log/maillog for "User unknown" then updates/etc/mail/aliases so that those addresses now get sent to uce@ftc.gov. Just about 99% of those addresses are from spamers. (The other 1% are people who fat-finger a real address or use.com when they should use.net). Often they just send to every possible first name at every domain. My aliases catch that. I'm sendind nearly 4,000 pieces of spam to the FTC (and spamrecycle@chooseyourmail.com) every week...
$ fgrep -c uce@ftc.gov/var/log/maillog.1
3927
$ fgrep -c uce@ftc.gov/var/log/maillog.2
4287
$ fgrep -c uce@ftc.gov/var/log/maillog.3
4411
I have been doing this since 1999ish. Maybe even earlier. I doubt it is doing much good. I have never gotten a reply from the FTC. I'm not getting any less spam. I'm still getting some of the same spam from the same companies that I was in 1999 (printer toner for one).
It does make me feel better to see that the FTC feels my pain but I don't think it's improving hte world. Maybe Slashdot can get an interview with whoever processes the uce@ftc.gov email?
InitZero
(I really wish Slashdot would allow the '' tag.)
Re: I hate to rain on Mr Cringely's parade, but...
on
Cringely's Bank Shot
·
· Score: 2
The correct fix would be a little 6-10db amp on the output of the Linksys, giving nice, clean power out to that 18db dish. Anyone have a source?
My suggestion would be Down East Microwave. They have lots of quality hardware. They say they won't sell 2.4 gHz stuff to non-hams but if you know enough to use the hardware, you can probably bluff your way along.
A 21dB pre-amp (for the RX end) is just $85 (and totally legal for anyone to use). If you are not a ham and want to break federal laws, check out their 2.3-2.4 linear amp. With one watt drive, it'll put out 15 watts. They make an amp that will put out 120 watts but it requires 10-20 watts of drive.
Trust me, folks, if you know a bit about electronics and want to do cool radio stuff, get a ham license. It'll cost you less than $20 (plus the cost of a book if you want to study first). In coolness alone, you'll be paid back many times over.
InitZero
Re: I hate to rain on Mr Cringely's parade, but...
on
Cringely's Bank Shot
·
· Score: 5, Informative
For those moderators not paying attention, the parent post is an obvious troll.
This is precisely why we need the FCC to regulate people's use of this equipment.
Cringely's setup is regulated by the FCC and is within FCC specifications. There is nothing illegal (as far as the FCC is concerned) here.
Did Bob Cringely ask a single person living in downtown what they thought of his terrific internet access plan?
Why would he? Does the neighborhood get a vote every time someone turns on a cell phone? What about when a ham radio operator fires up his 1,500 watt amp? What about when someone turns on a microwave oven?
What about the those people who use approved wireless equipment (phones, wireless networking) and now have to deal with the background noise
Cringely was using an FCC type-accepted device well within its specifications. Did you miss that part of his article?
coming from his souped up repeater?
His 'souped up repeater', as you call it, is a couple of antennas back to back. It's passive. His antennas don't put out power, they just focus the energy. With 18db of gain, his 100mw signal is still under five effective watts.
Wait, I'm sure he did a thorough study of his setup to make sure that it didn't interfere with transmissions by public safety agencies, right?
Dude, take a basic radio class. He isn't changing the operational frequency. He isn't using an illegal amp that might cause out of band splatter. His third order distortion won't be affected by a passive antenna. There is harmless.
What stopped him from using a 10 watt transmitter, so that the connection would be even faster?
If he had a ham radio license, he could legally run up to 1,500 watts of power, operate an active repeater and use whatever antenna array he wanted all in the same frequency range he is using now. As an added bonus, he still wouldn't have to fill out any paperwork, get any government approval or take a poll of his neighbors.
Follow the rules and don't subject other people to your homebrewed technology.
Once again, other than unlawful use of a tree for the purposes of geekness, I he hasn't broken any rules.
If you want to learn something about radio (and, trust me, you're really ignorant now), why not surf on over to the American Radio Relay League. They represent hams across the world. They have some very good teaching materials. If you study hard, maybe you can even get a ham license. It really is pretty nifty.
InitZero
Re:something tells me this idea is half-baked
on
Clear Hard Drive Mods
·
· Score: 5, Funny
Four 36 gig drives on 16 in our array blew out last week. (Probably heat-related. We had some AC problems in the computer room but the room never exceeded rated temperature.) Two weeks before that, two 18-gig drives in separate machines died for unknown reasons. The 36-gig drives were IBM. The 18-gig drives were Segate (who, at one time, made the IBM drives). In the last two months, we've also lost a few Maxtor drives.
Except for the batch of drives in one array, the above is fairly typical. We have thousands of drives from many vendors and I can't swear one is any better or worse than the other. Hard drives all pretty much suck.
Sure, we all read about MTBF being 500,000 hours for new drives but that's a pipe dream. Drives burn out every single day.
If you have the money, buy a pair of top quality drives and mirror them. If you can't afford that, buy a couple of cheap drives and mirror them. Don't put important data on a single drive and expect it to be there when you get back from lunch.
Neither this article, nor the previous one posted on/. mention what the USNA plans to do with the satellite.
Ham radio operators all over the world (please view with Netscape; it doesn't load right with IE) use a nifty packet application, APRS through PCSat.
APRS is short for Automatic Position Reporting System. Basically, the satellite allows hams to send GPS reports (such as mine), short text messages, weather reports, etc. to a large number of users. The satellite acts as a 'digital repeater'. Any packet it hears, it send back to earth.
To hit the satellite, all you need is a hand held radio running less than five watts of power into the stock 'rubber duck' antenna. If you're a boater, hiker or whatnot that isn't in range of land communications, you can easily send your data through the satellite and have it relayed to a huge earthly footprint.
Over much of the populated world, there are land based digital repeaters that will relay these packets for hams. Many even gate the information to the internet where it
can be viewed by anyone.
If you're the least bit technically and electronically minded, you can probably get the base level ham license (Technician) without any difficulty. It doesn't require a knowledge of Morse Code (CW) anymore. You can take the sample Tech test online. The sample test uses real questions right off the FCC exam. The test costs under $10 in most areas.
Using more than a dozen ham radio satellites for free isn't the only reason to get your ham license, of course. There's also that you can modify those 2.4 gHz network cards to run up to 1,500 watts of power legally instead of under half a watt as sold. Think what kind of distance you could extend your network! (And how many birds flying nearby will be microwaved!)
If nothing else, a ham radio license will get you another punch in your 'biggest geek' card. Who doesn't want that?
Will CCI provide conversion tools to migrate from the Portfolio product, or will you have to do the process on your own?
I'm pretty sure that CCI will write an import process to pull photos out of AP Preserver. I doubt they will do the same for Portfolio. It's not as universal as Perserver.
Since Portfolio doesn't alter the orignal image, worst case is that we'll have to import millions of photos into the new solution from scratch, losing good metadata. Portfolio does have a way to export data (or so I'm told) so I suspect we'll have to pay someone (probably CCI) to write an import script which will keep our yummy metadata. But I'm not holding my breath.
Migration of data from one image archive platform is a real problem. We have had at least three solutions this far and getting data out of one into the next is always painful.
Unlike text archiving which we figured out long ago, photo and image archiving is still a mystery. Our text archive is virtually unchanged since we bought it online in 1983 except for the addition of some drive space (it now has 12 gig online!) and a web interface (it was telnet only). In fact, the hardware is some of the oldest in the building.
Why not just use the filesystem to categorize pictures, and some other solution for hierarchical storage or removable media cataloging? Then, when you want to look for a picture, you just search for the directory/category name, and it'll either tell you where it is
Yes, you are oversimplifying. Big time.
I work for a newspaper. Our single greatest technological hurdle is archiving in some sort
or reasonable fashion.
You'd think the Associated Press would have this figured out. They create tens of thousands of pictures a day. They have the big stick to get the system built. They had their developers create a product called 'AP Preserver'. It was to be the end-all be-all photo archive solution. After many years of trying to get it right, they
dropped the product. Even with all their knowledge of the subject and a rather large check book, they couldn't get it right.
In the past, archiving photos was easy. They
were physical and humanity was well versed with
physical items. No longer is that the case. Digital photos are a pain in the buttocks.
Part of the problem is expectations are higher now that photos are digital. When photos were on strips of film, often times they weren't kept for more than five or ten years. Even folks who kept them longer generally didn't keep out-takes (photos not used in the newspaper).
Now, we are expected to keep every picture taken by every photographer of every event forever. Worse than that, folks want to be able to search for photos using keywords and sometimes even by what the picture looks like. (For example, if you want all the profile pictures of Bush, all you'd need to do is find a picture of Bush in profile and then feed it to the search engine and it will find the rest. (Just for clarification, when I say 'profile pictures of Bush', I mean profile pictures of President Bush and not profile pictures of hairy bush.)
The fairly large newspaper I work for creates a gig or so of photos and graphics each day (speaking only for Editorial and not Advertising).
We use a product called Portfolio by Extensis. It runs on an NT server which doesn't help the AskSlashdotter in the least. We will probably use Portfolio for another couple years until CCI's MediaStore is ready for prime time.
Some will say I'm being silly by comparing a major newspaper to a guy with a digital camera. We both face the same issues of cataloging and retrieval. The only difference is that he is probably using a 60-gig harddrive and we're using a multi-terabyte array.
Anyone who thinks that archiving photos is easy has never tried.
I'm sorry to report that there are no great photo archiving solutions. Find the one that sucks the least and you have accomplished much.
Dude! Have you ever tried to have a dinner party with six guests? Fairly easy, right? Try
to put on the same dinner party with 28 guests. All you need to do is make more, right? It ain't quite that easy.
The United States is a big place.
InitZero
Re: Nothing to see here, folks...move along
on
GPS Drawings
·
· Score: 2
And, of course, that GPS/APRS information is
gated to the Internet at the site FindU.com. For example, I'm right here. (Actually, I was there a while ago.)
Position information can be updated as often (every ten seconds) or as rarely as you want (when active, I send a packet every two minutes when moving; 30 minutes when stopped). You can also stations near me.
I never found ham radio very interesting until the advent of APRS. I can talk with someone across the world using email or a telephone. APRS brings something to ham radio I really enjoy.
When I'm touring on my bicycle, I generally have the GPS and ham radio with me. Folks all over the work can track me on the internet. One of these days, I'm going to tap into my heart rate monitor so that data can also be uploaded to the internet using ham radio.
Ham radio is a great way to your geekness to the next level.
Suppose we form a web site where good writers can put together coherent, intelligent letters on various issues.
The folks at 'tellthemnow.com' tried to buy my
domain 'tellthem.com' in 1999 for just that purpose. Eventually, they also bought 'writethemnow.com'. On either of those sites
(featured in the New York Times and elsewhere), you could get a pre-fab latter on a number of
topics along with an address for your reps.
Both of those domains (and the company, near
as I can tell) are now dead.
People don't care enough to write a letter.
Polititions don't care enough to read pre-fab
letters. Unless you *hand write* a personal,
heart-felt letter, it matters little.
With a junkyard alternator, you should be
able to generate 12 volts to recharge your
UPS batteries. I'm not sure how efficient the
process would be but it would be fun to try.
I know this is horrible but my first thought when I heard about the plane crash was 'gee, I hope everyone there has off-site backups'. At the
time, I was mostly joking and didn't know how serious the damage was.
Now, while I'm struggling with the human toll, I am also wondering about all the data centers in the World Trade Center that are now dust. Looking over their client directory, I found at least half a dozen companies that did just data hosting. It also looks as though most every Fortune 100 company had a major toe-hold in the building.
I can't help but wonder what sort of data has
been lost and how this is going to screw up finantial records for months if not years to come.
The system belongs to the customer. It's just
root. Give it to them. If it breaks, you fix it.
If they break it, you fix it. That's what you get
paid for.
How many people do stupid things to their cars?
Have you ever heard a mechanic consider not giving
a customer his keys after a repair has been made?
Of course not. The mechanic would go out of
business. Your job is to fix computers. Do it.
To protect your reputation, however, make sure
there are no direct root logons. By making folks
logon as themselves first then su'ing to root, you
know whose pecker tracks are all over the issue.
Yeah, wiring up a refridgeration unit to
your water pan to cool the water is 'over-engineering', however digging a 15 foot
deep hole in your yard to run copper tubing from
inside your house into isn't. Not flaming, just pointing out a rather glaring inconsistency in your logic.
Humans have been digging holes since before there were humans. Refridgeration is a relatively new invention. It is far less of an engineering feat to dig a hole in my ever so huble opinion.
Even when it is uber-hot in Florida (where I live), the ground temperature just a few feet below the surface is in the 70s. The reason the build houses in Arizona into the ground is that it is cool.
I haven't processed any film in years but it seems to me that 68-72 degress (F) for black and white is a good target. You should easily find that without digging too deep.
So, here is my cheap solution to your problem. Get 40 or 50 feet of copper pipe. Dig a vertical hole 10 to 20 feet deep by two feet wide more or less depending on just how hot your area gets. Put a couple loops of copper pipe in the hole. Run your water through the loop of copper tubing. Make sure that the tube above ground is insulated with the same foam stuff that is around your air conditioner line.
Out of pocket cost is going to be about a buck or so a foot all told by the time you figure in connectors and the like. The good news is that once you get it in the ground, there are no additional expenses unlike many of the other ideas mentioned that involve your electric bill.
As an added bonus, you'll also have a great earth ground system to tap into.
You might complain that there isn't enough water in 50 feet of pipe to do the job. I would disagree and suggest that you slow your wash cycle. Not only does high flow risk sliding off the emulsion, it is not needed and bad for the environment. A slow flow for a bit longer will do just fine and you'll have plenty of cool water.
This highlights the problem with filters;
they're incapable of distinguishing between
information that is innocuous and information
that is objectionable...
This is hardly a reason to protest filters.
For nearly 90 years, my church (founded in
1892) never locked the doors. Anyone seeking
refuge or just a quiet place to study long after
the libraries were closed could go to the church
any hour of the day. It didn't matter what your
religion was so long as you had respect for the
building and other folks, the church was open.
In 1982ish, after having the church vandalized
a few times, the church had to start locking its
doors in off hours. In the mid-1990s, it had to
install a security system thanks to a serious
theft and a few more vandals.
The problems with locks are the same as the
problems with filters; they keep the good out
along with the bad. As sad as it make me, our
society is better with locks than it is without
them. The same goes for filters. Filters are needed because not everyone is playing the game
by the same set of rules.
Filters aren't censorship. Filters are locks.
If you don't like filters, setup your own space
on the internet and don't use them. And if you
don't like locks, take them off your doors.
Slashdot Mirror
Where is the best place to FIND such dishes?
When we moved into our new house, the last couple had PrimeStar (one meter dish complete with lnb and receiver), wireless digital cable (from BellSouth, now defunct; 28db gain yagi, 2.4 ghz) and TimeWarner cable. I kept the cable. Everything else is in my shed.
If you'll pay shipping and a token finder's fee, you're welcome to the dish, lnb and receiver.
InitZero
broadband is a spanking new technology..
True! For the first few months I had my cable modem, all I did was stay at home, download porn and spank 24-7.
InitZero
When first developing our NT domain structure, the working group had a very high level 'Universal Resource Domain' as the starting point. All the users would be in that circle. Of course, the corporate name has to be slapped on everything we do. Thus, it was named the 'Tribune Universal Resource Domain'. It lasted for a few months as that until we did the final diagrams for the management group. Since there was little room, we cut it down to TURD. Needless to say, the name was changed. (Unfortunately, the NT domain structure stayed.)
When taking a class on IBM's AIX clustering system, HACMP (High Availability Clustered Muli-Processing), I came across the acronym DGSP. The IBM instructor didn't know what it stood for. (Functionally, DGSP is a system scram when things are so hosed up that the node is better down than up. It happens when one node can't talk to another node in the cluster.)
A few months latter, I was taking the advanced HACMP course at CLAM, the company that actually wrote HACMP for IBM, and asked about DGSP. They were able to explain that DGSP stands for 'Die Gravy Sucking Pig'. In some versions of HACMP you can strings a binary and find that for yourself.
IBM takes itself way too seriously, however, so gravy sucking pigs would never go over in their offical documentation. So, if you trudge through their updated documentation, you'll see that they say DGSP stands for 'Diagnostic Group Shutdown Partition'. That, by the way, makes substantially less sense than Die Gravy Sucking Pig.
InitZero
Anybody with half a brain already knows all they need to about Scientology...
Correction: Anyone with half a brain probably already IS a scientologist.
InitZero
Co-location is cheap and rock solid. I have hosted with three different companies in the last seven years and have been happy with all of them.
DSL and Cable -- even with the best provider -- aren't the same thing as living in a data center. You house doesn't have a couple of T3s. You house might have a UPS and air conditioning but I doubt it has a diesel generator and a fire supression system (other than your garden hose).
Besides that, for the cost of a DSL line with a static IP address (you wouldn't really think of trying this with a dynamic IP, would you?), you could get co-location on a fat pipe.
Right now, I'm co-locating 1U with Vortech Hosting out of Orlando. It's less than half a mile from where I work. They charge no setup fee and just $50 a month and that includes 10 gig of transfer on a pair of T3s. I can have as many IP addresses as I'd like so long as 80% are in use.
Yes, it is technically possible to host on the end of a residential cable or DSL line but if your time and sanity mean anything to you, don't do it. Find a nice co-location company and hire them.
InitZero
'Acceptance Period' with a much larger company for the purpose of determining if they want to license the source code and intellectual property of our main product.
Contrary to the majority Slashdot opinion, I wouldn't worry too much about the deal. Get a good lawyer who does this sort of work exclusively and you will be just fine.
45 days isn't all that long either. We (a Fortune 500 company) often get hardware and software for months before we make up our mind. (More than once, we had Cisco gear on loan for so long the model has been discontinued or replaced before we got around to approving it for purchase.)
When viewing source, the company viewing it is almost always in the more dangerous position. Once they see your code, should they every come up with a similar application, they will have to jump through hoops to prove it isn't based on your code. That can be very expensive.
Usually when I do this sort of review I'm looking for clean, well-commented code and good overall documentation. I am not a programmer by trade so I'm generally not evaluating the code itself but the overall maintainability.
Buying code from a company as small as you seem is dangerous. Often times, there are only a couple programmers who really know the application. Should they get run over by a truck or leave the company, I want to make sure that the code is clean enough that someone else (either in your company or mine) can pick up the torch and keep my business running.
It's not enough to have an excellent product today. I want to know that the product can change with our needs. That's the real reason I want to see the code and documentation as well as the finished product.
In summary, get a good lawyer and relax. This is common practice and a lawyer who has done it before will keep you from getting screwed.
InitZero
Say I made a ray-tracing of R2D2 in a heroic action pose.
Then I'd say you're a pathetic geek who needs to get out of his parent's basement once and a while. {grin}
InitZero
> Any chance you could post your script or a link to your script?
/var/log/maillog.1 | awk '{print $7}' | cut -d "@" -f 1 | cut -c2- | sort -u`
/etc/mail/aliases
Ugly as sin but fully-functional...
for I in `fgrep ">... User unknown"
do
echo "$I: uce@ftc.gov,spamrecycle@chooseyourmail.com" >>
done
newaliases
Run the above from cron after your [daily|weekly|monthly] maillog rotation. The only danger is that duplicates might show up in aliases. You can fix that by doing a 'sort -u' on the entire list.
InitZero
the FTC recommends that you forward all of your spam to uce@ftc.gov
Each week, a script searches my /var/log/maillog for "User unknown" then updates /etc/mail/aliases so that those addresses now get sent to uce@ftc.gov. Just about 99% of those addresses are from spamers. (The other 1% are people who fat-finger a real address or use .com when they should use .net). Often they just send to every possible first name at every domain. My aliases catch that. I'm sendind nearly 4,000 pieces of spam to the FTC (and spamrecycle@chooseyourmail.com) every week...
$ fgrep -c uce@ftc.gov /var/log/maillog.1
3927
$ fgrep -c uce@ftc.gov /var/log/maillog.2
4287
$ fgrep -c uce@ftc.gov /var/log/maillog.3
4411
I have been doing this since 1999ish. Maybe even earlier. I doubt it is doing much good. I have never gotten a reply from the FTC. I'm not getting any less spam. I'm still getting some of the same spam from the same companies that I was in 1999 (printer toner for one).
It does make me feel better to see that the FTC feels my pain but I don't think it's improving hte world. Maybe Slashdot can get an interview with whoever processes the uce@ftc.gov email?
InitZero
(I really wish Slashdot would allow the '' tag.)
The correct fix would be a little 6-10db amp on the output of the Linksys, giving nice, clean power out to that 18db dish. Anyone have a source?
My suggestion would be Down East Microwave . They have lots of quality hardware. They say they won't sell 2.4 gHz stuff to non-hams but if you know enough to use the hardware, you can probably bluff your way along.
A 21dB pre-amp (for the RX end) is just $85 (and totally legal for anyone to use). If you are not a ham and want to break federal laws, check out their 2.3-2.4 linear amp. With one watt drive, it'll put out 15 watts. They make an amp that will put out 120 watts but it requires 10-20 watts of drive.
Trust me, folks, if you know a bit about electronics and want to do cool radio stuff, get a ham license. It'll cost you less than $20 (plus the cost of a book if you want to study first). In coolness alone, you'll be paid back many times over.
InitZero
For those moderators not paying attention, the parent post is an obvious troll.
This is precisely why we need the FCC to regulate people's use of this equipment.
Cringely's setup is regulated by the FCC and is within FCC specifications. There is nothing illegal (as far as the FCC is concerned) here.
Did Bob Cringely ask a single person living in downtown what they thought of his terrific internet access plan?
Why would he? Does the neighborhood get a vote every time someone turns on a cell phone? What about when a ham radio operator fires up his 1,500 watt amp? What about when someone turns on a microwave oven?
What about the those people who use approved wireless equipment (phones, wireless networking) and now have to deal with the background noise
Cringely was using an FCC type-accepted device well within its specifications. Did you miss that part of his article?
coming from his souped up repeater?
His 'souped up repeater', as you call it, is a couple of antennas back to back. It's passive. His antennas don't put out power, they just focus the energy. With 18db of gain, his 100mw signal is still under five effective watts.
Wait, I'm sure he did a thorough study of his setup to make sure that it didn't interfere with transmissions by public safety agencies, right?
Dude, take a basic radio class. He isn't changing the operational frequency. He isn't using an illegal amp that might cause out of band splatter. His third order distortion won't be affected by a passive antenna. There is harmless.
What stopped him from using a 10 watt transmitter, so that the connection would be even faster?
If he had a ham radio license, he could legally run up to 1,500 watts of power, operate an active repeater and use whatever antenna array he wanted all in the same frequency range he is using now. As an added bonus, he still wouldn't have to fill out any paperwork, get any government approval or take a poll of his neighbors.
Follow the rules and don't subject other people to your homebrewed technology.
Once again, other than unlawful use of a tree for the purposes of geekness, I he hasn't broken any rules.
If you want to learn something about radio (and, trust me, you're really ignorant now), why not surf on over to the American Radio Relay League. They represent hams across the world. They have some very good teaching materials. If you study hard, maybe you can even get a ham license. It really is pretty nifty.
InitZero
telling me to Dremel my hard drive
For another Dremel-induced hardware modification, check out this guide to changing a video card.
I can't say I've tried it because I haven't. Heck, even if I had tried it, I might not admit the fact.InitZero
Four 36 gig drives on 16 in our array blew out last week. (Probably heat-related. We had some AC problems in the computer room but the room never exceeded rated temperature.) Two weeks before that, two 18-gig drives in separate machines died for unknown reasons. The 36-gig drives were IBM. The 18-gig drives were Segate (who, at one time, made the IBM drives). In the last two months, we've also lost a few Maxtor drives.
Except for the batch of drives in one array, the above is fairly typical. We have thousands of drives from many vendors and I can't swear one is any better or worse than the other. Hard drives all pretty much suck.
Sure, we all read about MTBF being 500,000 hours for new drives but that's a pipe dream. Drives burn out every single day.
If you have the money, buy a pair of top quality drives and mirror them. If you can't afford that, buy a couple of cheap drives and mirror them. Don't put important data on a single drive and expect it to be there when you get back from lunch.
InitZero
Neither this article, nor the previous one posted on /. mention what the USNA plans to do with the satellite.
Ham radio operators all over the world (please view with Netscape; it doesn't load right with IE) use a nifty packet application, APRS through PCSat.
APRS is short for Automatic Position Reporting System. Basically, the satellite allows hams to send GPS reports (such as mine), short text messages, weather reports, etc. to a large number of users. The satellite acts as a 'digital repeater'. Any packet it hears, it send back to earth.
To hit the satellite, all you need is a hand held radio running less than five watts of power into the stock 'rubber duck' antenna. If you're a boater, hiker or whatnot that isn't in range of land communications, you can easily send your data through the satellite and have it relayed to a huge earthly footprint.
Over much of the populated world, there are land based digital repeaters that will relay these packets for hams. Many even gate the information to the internet where it can be viewed by anyone.
If you're the least bit technically and electronically minded, you can probably get the base level ham license (Technician) without any difficulty. It doesn't require a knowledge of Morse Code (CW) anymore. You can take the sample Tech test online. The sample test uses real questions right off the FCC exam. The test costs under $10 in most areas.
Using more than a dozen ham radio satellites for free isn't the only reason to get your ham license, of course. There's also that you can modify those 2.4 gHz network cards to run up to 1,500 watts of power legally instead of under half a watt as sold. Think what kind of distance you could extend your network! (And how many birds flying nearby will be microwaved!)
If nothing else, a ham radio license will get you another punch in your 'biggest geek' card. Who doesn't want that?
Matt (k4mls)
Will CCI provide conversion tools to migrate from the Portfolio product, or will you have to do the process on your own?
I'm pretty sure that CCI will write an import process to pull photos out of AP Preserver. I doubt they will do the same for Portfolio. It's not as universal as Perserver.
Since Portfolio doesn't alter the orignal image, worst case is that we'll have to import millions of photos into the new solution from scratch, losing good metadata. Portfolio does have a way to export data (or so I'm told) so I suspect we'll have to pay someone (probably CCI) to write an import script which will keep our yummy metadata. But I'm not holding my breath.
Migration of data from one image archive platform is a real problem. We have had at least three solutions this far and getting data out of one into the next is always painful.
Unlike text archiving which we figured out long ago, photo and image archiving is still a mystery. Our text archive is virtually unchanged since we bought it online in 1983 except for the addition of some drive space (it now has 12 gig online!) and a web interface (it was telnet only). In fact, the hardware is some of the oldest in the building.
Matt
Why not just use the filesystem to categorize pictures, and some other solution for hierarchical storage or removable media cataloging? Then, when you want to look for a picture, you just search for the directory/category name, and it'll either tell you where it is
Yes, you are oversimplifying. Big time.
I work for a newspaper. Our single greatest technological hurdle is archiving in some sort or reasonable fashion.
You'd think the Associated Press would have this figured out. They create tens of thousands of pictures a day. They have the big stick to get the system built. They had their developers create a product called 'AP Preserver'. It was to be the end-all be-all photo archive solution. After many years of trying to get it right, they dropped the product. Even with all their knowledge of the subject and a rather large check book, they couldn't get it right.
In the past, archiving photos was easy. They were physical and humanity was well versed with physical items. No longer is that the case. Digital photos are a pain in the buttocks.
Part of the problem is expectations are higher now that photos are digital. When photos were on strips of film, often times they weren't kept for more than five or ten years. Even folks who kept them longer generally didn't keep out-takes (photos not used in the newspaper).
Now, we are expected to keep every picture taken by every photographer of every event forever. Worse than that, folks want to be able to search for photos using keywords and sometimes even by what the picture looks like. (For example, if you want all the profile pictures of Bush, all you'd need to do is find a picture of Bush in profile and then feed it to the search engine and it will find the rest. (Just for clarification, when I say 'profile pictures of Bush', I mean profile pictures of President Bush and not profile pictures of hairy bush.)
The fairly large newspaper I work for creates a gig or so of photos and graphics each day (speaking only for Editorial and not Advertising). We use a product called Portfolio by Extensis. It runs on an NT server which doesn't help the AskSlashdotter in the least. We will probably use Portfolio for another couple years until CCI's MediaStore is ready for prime time.
Some will say I'm being silly by comparing a major newspaper to a guy with a digital camera. We both face the same issues of cataloging and retrieval. The only difference is that he is probably using a 60-gig harddrive and we're using a multi-terabyte array.
Anyone who thinks that archiving photos is easy has never tried.
I'm sorry to report that there are no great photo archiving solutions. Find the one that sucks the least and you have accomplished much.
Matt
Dude! Have you ever tried to have a dinner party with six guests? Fairly easy, right? Try to put on the same dinner party with 28 guests. All you need to do is make more, right? It ain't quite that easy.
The United States is a big place.
InitZero
And, of course, that GPS/APRS information is gated to the Internet at the site FindU.com. For example, I'm right here. (Actually, I was there a while ago.)
Position information can be updated as often (every ten seconds) or as rarely as you want (when active, I send a packet every two minutes when moving; 30 minutes when stopped). You can also stations near me.
I never found ham radio very interesting until the advent of APRS. I can talk with someone across the world using email or a telephone. APRS brings something to ham radio I really enjoy.
When I'm touring on my bicycle, I generally have the GPS and ham radio with me. Folks all over the work can track me on the internet. One of these days, I'm going to tap into my heart rate monitor so that data can also be uploaded to the internet using ham radio.
Ham radio is a great way to your geekness to the next level.
InitZero
Suppose we form a web site where good writers can put together coherent, intelligent letters on various issues.
The folks at 'tellthemnow.com' tried to buy my domain 'tellthem.com' in 1999 for just that purpose. Eventually, they also bought 'writethemnow.com'. On either of those sites (featured in the New York Times and elsewhere), you could get a pre-fab latter on a number of topics along with an address for your reps.
Both of those domains (and the company, near as I can tell) are now dead.
People don't care enough to write a letter. Polititions don't care enough to read pre-fab letters. Unless you *hand write* a personal, heart-felt letter, it matters little.
InitZero
How about a backup generator?
With a junkyard alternator, you should be
able to generate 12 volts to recharge your
UPS batteries. I'm not sure how efficient the
process would be but it would be fun to try.
InitZero
I know this is horrible but my first thought when I heard about the plane crash was 'gee, I hope everyone there has off-site backups'. At the time, I was mostly joking and didn't know how serious the damage was.
Now, while I'm struggling with the human toll, I am also wondering about all the data centers in the World Trade Center that are now dust. Looking over their client directory, I found at least half a dozen companies that did just data hosting. It also looks as though most every Fortune 100 company had a major toe-hold in the building.
I can't help but wonder what sort of data has been lost and how this is going to screw up finantial records for months if not years to come.
InitZero
The system belongs to the customer. It's just root. Give it to them. If it breaks, you fix it. If they break it, you fix it. That's what you get paid for.
How many people do stupid things to their cars? Have you ever heard a mechanic consider not giving a customer his keys after a repair has been made? Of course not. The mechanic would go out of business. Your job is to fix computers. Do it.
To protect your reputation, however, make sure there are no direct root logons. By making folks logon as themselves first then su'ing to root, you know whose pecker tracks are all over the issue.
InitZero
Yeah, wiring up a refridgeration unit to your water pan to cool the water is 'over-engineering', however digging a 15 foot deep hole in your yard to run copper tubing from inside your house into isn't. Not flaming, just pointing out a rather glaring inconsistency in your logic.
Humans have been digging holes since before there were humans. Refridgeration is a relatively new invention. It is far less of an engineering feat to dig a hole in my ever so huble opinion.
InitZero
Y'all are way over-engineering the problem.
Even when it is uber-hot in Florida (where I live), the ground temperature just a few feet below the surface is in the 70s. The reason the build houses in Arizona into the ground is that it is cool.
I haven't processed any film in years but it seems to me that 68-72 degress (F) for black and white is a good target. You should easily find that without digging too deep.
So, here is my cheap solution to your problem. Get 40 or 50 feet of copper pipe. Dig a vertical hole 10 to 20 feet deep by two feet wide more or less depending on just how hot your area gets. Put a couple loops of copper pipe in the hole. Run your water through the loop of copper tubing. Make sure that the tube above ground is insulated with the same foam stuff that is around your air conditioner line.
Out of pocket cost is going to be about a buck or so a foot all told by the time you figure in connectors and the like. The good news is that once you get it in the ground, there are no additional expenses unlike many of the other ideas mentioned that involve your electric bill.
As an added bonus, you'll also have a great earth ground system to tap into.
You might complain that there isn't enough water in 50 feet of pipe to do the job. I would disagree and suggest that you slow your wash cycle. Not only does high flow risk sliding off the emulsion, it is not needed and bad for the environment. A slow flow for a bit longer will do just fine and you'll have plenty of cool water.
InitZero
This highlights the problem with filters; they're incapable of distinguishing between information that is innocuous and information that is objectionable...
This is hardly a reason to protest filters.
For nearly 90 years, my church (founded in 1892) never locked the doors. Anyone seeking refuge or just a quiet place to study long after the libraries were closed could go to the church any hour of the day. It didn't matter what your religion was so long as you had respect for the building and other folks, the church was open.
In 1982ish, after having the church vandalized a few times, the church had to start locking its doors in off hours. In the mid-1990s, it had to install a security system thanks to a serious theft and a few more vandals.
The problems with locks are the same as the problems with filters; they keep the good out along with the bad. As sad as it make me, our society is better with locks than it is without them. The same goes for filters. Filters are needed because not everyone is playing the game by the same set of rules.
Filters aren't censorship. Filters are locks. If you don't like filters, setup your own space on the internet and don't use them. And if you don't like locks, take them off your doors.
InitZero