I've seen some of the hardware google uses and it's not fancy name brand redundant everything servers. In fact their setups might shock some IT traditionalists. They seem to use standard mother boards mounted on open shelfs(no case), with a psu and an IDE hard drive.
From what I've read about google their philosophy is it's better to have a number of redundant servers, then one critical server.
The bell system had working video phone technology in the mid 1950s, began field trails in the 1960s, and by late 1960s and through 1970s they tried to find market for it. But it never really got beyond the trail phase. Even the users who used the system during the trails (for free or at a greatly reduced cost), rarely deiced to continue using them. Mainly because of the very high cost of the service.
The high cost came from the fact that it required a completely separate network to move the video signals, a separate 4 wire subscriber loop with special equalizes added to allow for video transmission, a dedicated video switch at the central office, a dedicated video PBX switch for business customers, and a lot of bandwidth on trunks for interoffice and long distance calls. The plan for long distance calls was a very advanced for the time(late 1960s), the analog picturephone signal would be digitized with a 6.3megabits/sec bitrate, and sent over the long distance network. That's quite a bit of bandwidth to have to give to one subscriber, and probably would be a very expensive call. One attempt to try the service more viable to business customers, was to use the picturephone to interact with a computer system, input was done via touch tone dial pad, and out put would be displayed on the screen.
There is special issue of the Bell Laboratories Record, from may/june of 1969 that is dedicated to the picturephone, and all technology, research, and network designs are detailed.
Except for dealing with all virus emails that would still get to linux system. Let's not forget the bounces that this seems to gerneate, by faking email addresses.
At least in GM cars It seems to have full access to the vechiles data bus, so it can proablly do anything it want's. From locking your doors, to even what presets are on the radio.
Getting a standalone gps unit would see to be simpler, I guess if your good a soldering it might be worth it.
Also am I the only one that finds onstar scary? I mean here's a device where some company can dial in to my car, listen in on the cabin, get my location, or talk to various devices on the car's data network. How do I know who onstar will sell out to? Say the government wants to know where I am, wants to monitor what I'm talking about in my car or if I modified my car in any way. While I don't know if any of these things are possible in the current OnStar system, the basic hardware would seem to support these features. Also not mention onstar uses the notoriously insecure AMPS cell phone system, which seems a little scary considering the amount of access given the onstar unit.
My company found remote desktop to be a very good reason to move users to XP. Remote desktop uses the very lightweight RDP protocol, so reasonable remote access is available with not a lot of bandwidth. Users who have to, need to, or want to, work from home can get access to all the software, and network resources just like they were at there office pc. Provides a quick, and easy to setup remote access solution, user can use there home PC, or a older company issued laptop. No worries, about having to setup and maintain extra computers for users who want to work at home, and no worries about synchronizing data between 2 pcs.
POTS phones are too simple. With VOIP I need a lot expensive equipment in a complex setup.
Who needs line powered phones. I like having to have my own battery bank, and generator to keep IP network up. I'm not longer at the phone companies mercy for powering my phones!
My Broadband provider is much more reliable then the phone company.
Having stop using my broadband connection to make a phone call reminds me of my old dial-up days.
High voice quality is overrated, with VOIP I get compressed sound, and dropouts just like I was talking on a cell phone!
Who needs E911 serivce, I can get out my phone book an look up the number when I have an emergency, and I can tell them where I am. No more big brother tracking where I'm calling from.
What better way to route local calls then all around the country on the internet backbone, then back to my town.
I no longer have to pay those damn universal service fees, if those poor people want phone service they can full price , or suffer with out it. They can use a pay phone(these still exist?).
POTS = Plain Old Telephone Serivce, the basci analog serivce you get from the phone company.
While the OS might support hot swaping, the hardware might not, most of sun's hardware line, the low to mid-range, does not have hot swapable cpu's/memory boards.
Who wants to be TOLD what to watch or listen to, and when?
Radio's nice for finding out new about bands, and music. Plus XM transmits the title and artist information, so I know what the heck I'm listening to, and some recivers will even let you save the information for later. Must get boring listening to the same albums over and over agian.
While every song might be available for download, and your willing to wait in long queues for downloads. But most people only download what they know, which gets boring after a while. But listening to a good radio station(such as XM's) you get introduced to new music, and new bands. Heck $10/month is worth it so I don't have to listen to crappy morning DJ's and all the ads on broadcast radio.
Yes, this is the most important item. If you look a coverage map for many providers you will see that most the US does not have cell coverage. In places many places the coverage is very spotty, and if you do manage to get a signal you still have to hope the cell your on is not overloaded.
Although my experience with sprint-pcs their coverage is very bad. One sprint phone I had would switch in out roaming mode just sitting on a desk. But, sprints 3g upgrade may improve service, one of my co workers as sprint-pcs vision(3g) phone and it gets usable service in our office, as opposed to numerous other non-3g Sprint phones, which just barely get service.
Lets not forget there are still vast regions of the us with NO cell phone coverage at all. If you actually look at many providers coverage maps, in much of country you will only find cell service along interstates.
If mobile phones become even more common, it might be time for the government to step in and force cell companies to provide true national coverage with decent capacity for calls. One way to do this could be, placing requirements on building permits for new cell installations, requiring as condition of approval. The other problem is many cells are all ready overloaded with normal call volumes, hopefully additional requirements could be made to force cell providers to have extra capacity, for emergencies, etc.
This is bad news for all the people who can't justify paying $30+/month for a cell phone. With ubiquitous pay phones in case of emergency, knowing you could find a near by pay phone. From this article, it could soon become very hard to find a pay-phone when one is needed. This will be big problem for the lower middle class, who can't justify paying for a cell phone, but live areas, where cell toting yuppies, have caused most of the pat phones to be removed. The poor may be less effected, as, according to the article, phones in poorer areas are still profitable.
Well the problem with using talk is that talk needs the hostname/IP of the users machine to begin a session. In the world of dyanmic IP addresses there's it's rare to know the network address of who you might want to chat with. Plus talk is just one to one chat, no instant messaging or file transfer.
Why? Probbaly because very little has been done to improve how "wired" Blacksburg is. Espically in terms of access, while some residences have high speed ethernet, those are often in the minority of all the housing in town. Cable Modems are availble, but are still one way and frow what I've heard not to relible. DSL Service is also availble, but has a $200+ installation fee. Most internet users in Blacksburg still have to modem, which means slow connecitons.
Why do you think that the public keeps brigning up the easy answers?
Because, easy answers have easy solutions, also always invole the other guy. It's easy to blame Marilyn Manson, DOOM, the Internet, and trench coats, becuase these have nothing to do with the persons placing the blame. Now with these answers there is now an easy solution, just get rid of these things and the problem will go away. Of course, this is just a solution that will not really work, but it will cause the public to belive the problem is being worked on. The real problem here is the High School Culture, and even American Culture. Now to accepet this answer would require people to blame themselves, which of course is a hard thing to do.
The high school culture is very messed up, it basicly one of confority, and control, if doesn't fit in and play by the rules, then one is punished. Now this is not a easy problem to fix, there some hard truths that need to famced and some hard changes will need to be made.
The problem american culture, is the desire to have everything, yet give up nothing. This leads to a porblem with many american families, now when a couple has kids they are unwilling to give much of anything for the welfare of the kids. In order to keep a big house, the expensive cars, and the other luxeries of life, both parents have to keep working, and there is no one to properly raise the kids. The real soultion is for parents to reailize that parenting is not a part-time job and not a job that someone else can do. Then decide that they want a family there needs to be a strong commitment do doing it right.
Jon, Great article, it's good to hear what is really happing, and further expose the stupidity of easy answers.
Currently, most of the high-speed internet connections availible to consumers have so many restrictions on them. For example limited to one computer, one IP address, no servers, limits on the amount data transfered, etc. Of course there's a good reason for these restirctions, so that these companys can keep control of the content provided. Imagine what the internet would be like if everyone could be there own information provider, without having to deal with stupid restrictions from ISP's. This is true promise of the internet.
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I've seen some of the hardware google uses and it's not fancy name brand redundant everything servers. In fact their setups might shock some IT traditionalists. They seem to use standard mother boards mounted on open shelfs(no case), with a psu and an IDE hard drive.
From what I've read about google their philosophy is it's better to have a number of redundant servers, then one critical server.
Of course after you figured out how to get Debian to install a SUN JDK, its fairly easy, but Debain makes it very hard to install SUN's jdk.
The bell system had working video phone technology in the mid 1950s, began field trails in the 1960s, and by late 1960s and through 1970s they tried to find market for it. But it never really got beyond the trail phase. Even the users who used the system during the trails (for free or at a greatly reduced cost), rarely deiced to continue using them. Mainly because of the very high cost of the service.
The high cost came from the fact that it required a completely separate network to move the video signals, a separate 4 wire subscriber loop with special equalizes added to allow for video transmission, a dedicated video switch at the central office, a dedicated video PBX switch for business customers, and a lot of bandwidth on trunks for interoffice and long distance calls. The plan for long distance calls was a very advanced for the time(late 1960s), the analog picturephone signal would be digitized with a 6.3megabits/sec bitrate, and sent over the long distance network. That's quite a bit of bandwidth to have to give to one subscriber, and probably would be a very expensive call. One attempt to try the service more viable to business customers, was to use the picturephone to interact with a computer system, input was done via touch tone dial pad, and out put would be displayed on the screen.
There is special issue of the Bell Laboratories Record, from may/june of 1969 that is dedicated to the picturephone, and all technology, research, and network designs are detailed.
So Mozilla Mail has some way to stop people from opening a zip file attachment, that contains a virus?
Except for dealing with all virus emails that would still get to linux system. Let's not forget the bounces that this seems to gerneate, by faking email addresses.
At least in GM cars It seems to have full access to the vechiles data bus, so it can proablly do anything it want's. From locking your doors, to even what presets are on the radio.
Getting a standalone gps unit would see to be simpler, I guess if your good a soldering it might be worth it.
Also am I the only one that finds onstar scary? I mean here's a device where some company can dial in to my car, listen in on the cabin, get my location, or talk to various devices on the car's data network. How do I know who onstar will sell out to? Say the government wants to know where I am, wants to monitor what I'm talking about in my car or if I modified my car in any way. While I don't know if any of these things are possible in the current OnStar system, the basic hardware would seem to support these features. Also not mention onstar uses the notoriously insecure AMPS cell phone system, which seems a little scary considering the amount of access given the onstar unit.
Well the cheap solution is to use 2 realy racks placed so things that need 4 posts can be screwed in to all the racks.
My company found remote desktop to be a very good reason to move users to XP. Remote desktop uses the very lightweight RDP protocol, so reasonable remote access is available with not a lot of bandwidth. Users who have to, need to, or want to, work from home can get access to all the software, and network resources just like they were at there office pc. Provides a quick, and easy to setup remote access solution, user can use there home PC, or a older company issued laptop. No worries, about having to setup and maintain extra computers for users who want to work at home, and no worries about synchronizing data between 2 pcs.
POTS = Plain Old Telephone Serivce, the basci analog serivce you get from the phone company.
Unless it's one of thoose sites that has the right click blocked. Insted of a contaxt menu you get a anonyoing meesage box.
But my 5-button mouse has the 2 side buttons maped to forward and back.
While the OS might support hot swaping, the hardware might not, most of sun's hardware line, the low to mid-range, does not have hot swapable cpu's/memory boards.
Many universities have done this same thing. I know Virginia Tech uses their still used steam tunnels to run fiber to the many buildings on campus.
I was refering to XM radio.. not FM..
Radio's nice for finding out new about bands, and music. Plus XM transmits the title and artist information, so I know what the heck I'm listening to, and some recivers will even let you save the information for later. Must get boring listening to the same albums over and over agian.
While every song might be available for download, and your willing to wait in long queues for downloads. But most people only download what they know, which gets boring after a while. But listening to a good radio station(such as XM's) you get introduced to new music, and new bands. Heck $10/month is worth it so I don't have to listen to crappy morning DJ's and all the ads on broadcast radio.
Yes, this is the most important item. If you look a coverage map for many providers you will see that most the US does not have cell coverage. In places many places the coverage is very spotty, and if you do manage to get a signal you still have to hope the cell your on is not overloaded.
Although my experience with sprint-pcs their coverage is very bad. One sprint phone I had would switch in out roaming mode just sitting on a desk. But, sprints 3g upgrade may improve service, one of my co workers as sprint-pcs vision(3g) phone and it gets usable service in our office, as opposed to numerous other non-3g Sprint phones, which just barely get service.
Lets not forget there are still vast regions of the us with NO cell phone coverage at all. If you actually look at many providers coverage maps, in much of country you will only find cell service along interstates.
If mobile phones become even more common, it might be time for the government to step in and force cell companies to provide true national coverage with decent capacity for calls. One way to do this could be, placing requirements on building permits for new cell installations, requiring as condition of approval. The other problem is many cells are all ready overloaded with normal call volumes, hopefully additional requirements could be made to force cell providers to have extra capacity, for emergencies, etc.
This is bad news for all the people who can't justify paying $30+/month for a cell phone. With ubiquitous pay phones in case of emergency, knowing you could find a near by pay phone. From this article, it could soon become very hard to find a pay-phone when one is needed. This will be big problem for the lower middle class, who can't justify paying for a cell phone, but live areas, where cell toting yuppies, have caused most of the pat phones to be removed. The poor may be less effected, as, according to the article, phones in poorer areas are still profitable.
But it costs $49.95, if you willing to take a chance you can use a generic 2x4 but you could void your warenty.
You forgot prehaps the best Win XP feature for latop users, Cleartype. Which greatly imporoves the on screen fonts, on my XP laptop.
Well the problem with using talk is that talk needs the hostname/IP of the users machine to begin a session. In the world of dyanmic IP addresses there's it's rare to know the network address of who you might want to chat with. Plus talk is just one to one chat, no instant messaging or file transfer.
Why? Probbaly because very little has been done to improve how "wired" Blacksburg is. Espically in terms of access, while some residences have high speed ethernet, those are often in the minority of all the housing in town. Cable Modems are availble, but are still one way and frow what I've heard not to relible. DSL Service is also availble, but has a $200+ installation fee. Most internet users in Blacksburg still have to modem, which means slow connecitons.
Why do you think that the public keeps brigning up the easy answers?
Because, easy answers have easy solutions, also always invole the other guy. It's easy to blame Marilyn Manson, DOOM, the Internet, and trench coats, becuase these have nothing to do with the persons placing the blame. Now with these answers there is now an easy solution, just get rid of these things and the problem will go away. Of course, this is just a solution that will not really work, but it will cause the public to belive the problem is being worked on. The real problem here is the High School Culture, and even American Culture. Now to accepet this answer would require people to blame themselves, which of course is a hard thing to do.
The high school culture is very messed up, it basicly one of confority, and control, if doesn't fit in and play by the rules, then one is punished. Now this is not a easy problem to fix, there some hard truths that need to famced and some hard changes will need to be made.
The problem american culture, is the desire to have everything, yet give up nothing. This leads to a porblem with many american families, now when a couple has kids they are unwilling to give much of anything for the welfare of the kids. In order to keep a big house, the expensive cars, and the other luxeries of life, both parents have to keep working, and there is no one to properly raise the kids. The real soultion is for parents to reailize that parenting is not a part-time job and not a job that someone else can do. Then decide that they want a family there needs to be a strong commitment do doing it right.
Jon,
Great article, it's good to hear what is really happing, and further expose the stupidity of easy answers.
Currently, most of the high-speed internet connections availible to consumers have so many restrictions on them. For example limited to one computer, one IP address, no servers, limits on the amount data transfered, etc. Of course there's a good reason for these restirctions, so that these companys can keep control of the content provided. Imagine what the internet would be like if everyone could be there own information provider, without having to deal with stupid restrictions from ISP's. This is true promise of the internet.