I'm a submariner. We use numerous commercial off-the-shelf computers (mostly Dells), none of which are hardened against the elements. Except that we go to a lot of trouble to keep water out of the boat. And the whole thing is temperature controlled. And humidity controlled. Oh well.
-Gentry
Re:Message from the Admin (repost)
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if slashdot ever gets wind of your new site it's probably screwed too, but that notwithstanding... 1) Run Apache 2) Use SSI 3) Make sure that the main index page is owned by a separated account from the one you hand out 4) Make sure that the account you hand out can't chown the index page 5) Set up a separate file that can be modified/deleted by whomever, and that in the index page 6) Set up a process to replicate the entire directory structure (preferably to a new location) every x minutes, this way you have a history of a living document. Wait 6 months and document the results. The truth is it'll never be truely protected, but you could take some really basic steps to keep your head above the storm, so to speak... Cheers! -Gentry
...was that it kept all those wacky scientologists busy for a year or two. I'd happily suffer through more bad movies like this if it helps to prevent them from screwing up the world.
Someone asked about bandwidth: it's about 4.3k/s per phone, but the technology allows you gang several connections for greater bandwidth.
Someone else was griping about the size of the handheld units: the most recent phone is about the size of a sony cordless phone that you might find in any household. Remember that for satphone communications you are limited to a certain length for the antenna, and require to certain gain to be able to communicate with the satellite.
Others have mentioned that the satellites will deorbit in the next year/5 years: this is just a misnomer, some of the satellites would need to be replaced, but many of them can be maintained beyond their specified lifespan.
As far as making a profit, the Castle Harlan is just the finance company, and they acting as a broker for another company that was set up specifically to take over the Iridium project. The largest projected source of revenue is government contracts (duh, who else needs to call anywhere, any time?), this alone should allow them the $1 million/month operating costs, and profit enough for future maintenance. Keep in mind that the deal is far more complex than the watered down version you see on CNET.
Last but not least, remember the story of chicken little...
I for one would love to see Iridium stick around for a while, and I wish them the best of luck.
First off, I don't believe that this technology is mature enough to adapt to a narrative format.
Consider that the greatest volume of information published on the internet is non-fiction. This sort of information lends itself to being categorized, cross-referenced, indexed, tabled, and linked. It makes it very easy for the audience to learn the information that they are interested in, while skipping whatever they like. I think of it as do-it-yourself dynamic content.
On the other hand, non-fiction works are, by their nature, narrative documents. It seems to me that this is fine for short stories, but for a longer work it gets more complicated.
The internet seems to me to be a form of short attention span theater. We get our information in small, easily digestible bites, and move on to the next thing that interests us. Certainly a novel requires a greater attention span than this.
Also, novels effect their readers much differently. When I curl up with a good book I find that my body physically reacts to the temperament of the book that I'm reading. Tense pages may cause me to curl up into a little ball, while relaxed one's cause me to stretch out. This interaction with the book would seem to be difficult to reproduce here at my desk.
Personally, the e-texts I have tried to read have failed to keep my attention. Not because they weren't any good, but because there are so many reminders of the other things I have to do right here in front of me, or because I became uncomfortable. (I recall that my very last e-text outing left me with a headache, a backache, and a sore ass)
At first, however, I thought it might have been the content that bothered me. A quick trip to the store to purchase an unfinished Dickens book seemed to prove that wrong.
These are just a few considerations you should make for you reader. Perhaps some people out there are perfectly happy to spend 2 hours reading your narrative on their computer screen, but I'd like to spend them on my couch.
On the other hand, there are some considerations you should make as an author.
If you choose to publish your work without the support of a traditional publishing house you lose the benefit of a great deal of experience. Most importantly, you lose access to an impartial editor. I've put down books that are poorly edited again, and never picked them up again. In the worst cases there are authors I will never read again simply due to a series of dumb editing mistakes.
If you don't desire success, or fame, then some of these other things are much less important, but a publisher also offers you marketing, promotion, publicity, and sales management. It can be a lot of work for an author to do.
I think the best approach I have seen so far is to publish in a dead tree format, but to make the first chapter (or three) available on line. I think this is an especially wonderful idea for new authors, who may otherwise have a hard time convincing readers that they have something interesting to say.
Previously published authors may be able to get away with putting new or derivative works on the internet, but I doubt any new author will see a significant audience for his work. Would you commit to spending an hour or two a night in front of your computer to read something by an author you've never heard of when you could be reading slashdot and playing Team Fortress II (or whatever) instead?
This is entirely short sighted, unrealistic, and fails to take into account any real world scenerios.
The internet is a public place, no different from the local shopping mall, grocery store, public library, movie theater, whatever...
When you go to the mall they expect that you will and won't do a number of things, commonly accepted criteria for activity in a public place (read: no shirt, no shoes, no service).
On the internet nobody gives a damn if your in your shorts, but suddenly your not allowed to do any number of things that you could realisticly do physically.
For example, lets say I'm doing market research and I send 50 people to the local mall to run around and look at what kind of (product) is being sold, and how many of them, and how much they cost. This is perfectly legitimate, and legal since that information is publicly available. I probably can't go into the stock room and see how many of (product) are not on the shelves, but I can certianly just have a look around the store (just like anyone else).
If we apply the latest internet precidents to this senerio I would NOT be allowed to do this without breaking the law. Suddenly I would be using that stores resources and denying them use of that resource for whatever reason they deemed more important. So I'm not allowed to go the store if I'm just window shopping now?
Publicly accessable resources are held up to a very high standard. Anyone can find out how much a store charges for , this is good for everyone, the store, the customers, the manufacturers.... The same applies (or should apply) to the internet.
As far as purely internet related impact is concerned, can anyone who hosts a site look through their server logs and sue anyone who connects to their site to much? Or all those search engines that come through on a regular basis? Or anyone that pre-caches the site automatically (gee, this is even a feature in Internet Explore... more MS trials?).
My opinion: The internet is a public place, and fair use of a public place is already governed by a certian set of rules and regulations (at least here in the US). Let these rules and regulations do their job and stop creating "special regulation" for a situation that isn't radically different from anything else we humans do on this planet. Just because you do something on the internet doesn't mean it requires special regulation. -Gentry
"The High-bandwidth Digital Copy Protection (HDCP) approach encrypts each pixel as it moves from a personal computer or set-top box to digital displays"
The key to this is that the data is encrypted just before it is transmitted, implying that if it was encrypted any other way prior to "now" that it does exsist in an unencrypted form on your system during the conversion process...
This seems like a waste of clock cycles if you ask me. Not to mention the fact (I believe a million people brought this up already) that it's only using 56-bit encryption (likely for two good reasons: it keeps the hardware cheap and the decryption method is fast enough to ensure that you can decrypt the massive quantity of data that is being transmitted...) so it won't be long before they have to start zotting keys...
oof... doesn't matter anyway, no consumer in their right mind would buy this piece this crap, it'll be too expensive with virtually no pay off....
Slashdot Mirror
I'm a submariner. We use numerous commercial off-the-shelf computers (mostly Dells), none of which are hardened against the elements. Except that we go to a lot of trouble to keep water out of the boat. And the whole thing is temperature controlled. And humidity controlled. Oh well.
-Gentry
if slashdot ever gets wind of your new site it's probably screwed too, but that notwithstanding... 1) Run Apache 2) Use SSI 3) Make sure that the main index page is owned by a separated account from the one you hand out 4) Make sure that the account you hand out can't chown the index page 5) Set up a separate file that can be modified/deleted by whomever, and that in the index page 6) Set up a process to replicate the entire directory structure (preferably to a new location) every x minutes, this way you have a history of a living document. Wait 6 months and document the results. The truth is it'll never be truely protected, but you could take some really basic steps to keep your head above the storm, so to speak... Cheers! -Gentry
...was that it kept all those wacky scientologists busy for a year or two. I'd happily suffer through more bad movies like this if it helps to prevent them from screwing up the world.
-Gentry
Someone asked about bandwidth: it's about 4.3k/s per phone, but the technology allows you gang several connections for greater bandwidth.
Someone else was griping about the size of the handheld units: the most recent phone is about the size of a sony cordless phone that you might find in any household. Remember that for satphone communications you are limited to a certain length for the antenna, and require to certain gain to be able to communicate with the satellite.
Others have mentioned that the satellites will deorbit in the next year/5 years: this is just a misnomer, some of the satellites would need to be replaced, but many of them can be maintained beyond their specified lifespan.
As far as making a profit, the Castle Harlan is just the finance company, and they acting as a broker for another company that was set up specifically to take over the Iridium project. The largest projected source of revenue is government contracts (duh, who else needs to call anywhere, any time?), this alone should allow them the $1 million/month operating costs, and profit enough for future maintenance. Keep in mind that the deal is far more complex than the watered down version you see on CNET.
Last but not least, remember the story of chicken little...
I for one would love to see Iridium stick around for a while, and I wish them the best of luck.
-geek@large
First off, I don't believe that this technology is mature enough to adapt to a narrative format.
Consider that the greatest volume of information published on the internet is non-fiction. This sort of information lends itself to being categorized, cross-referenced, indexed, tabled, and linked. It makes it very easy for the audience to learn the information that they are interested in, while skipping whatever they like. I think of it as do-it-yourself dynamic content.
On the other hand, non-fiction works are, by their nature, narrative documents. It seems to me that this is fine for short stories, but for a longer work it gets more complicated.
The internet seems to me to be a form of short attention span theater. We get our information in small, easily digestible bites, and move on to the next thing that interests us. Certainly a novel requires a greater attention span than this.
Also, novels effect their readers much differently. When I curl up with a good book I find that my body physically reacts to the temperament of the book that I'm reading. Tense pages may cause me to curl up into a little ball, while relaxed one's cause me to stretch out. This interaction with the book would seem to be difficult to reproduce here at my desk.
Personally, the e-texts I have tried to read have failed to keep my attention. Not because they weren't any good, but because there are so many reminders of the other things I have to do right here in front of me, or because I became uncomfortable. (I recall that my very last e-text outing left me with a headache, a backache, and a sore ass)
At first, however, I thought it might have been the content that bothered me. A quick trip to the store to purchase an unfinished Dickens book seemed to prove that wrong.
These are just a few considerations you should make for you reader. Perhaps some people out there are perfectly happy to spend 2 hours reading your narrative on their computer screen, but I'd like to spend them on my couch.
On the other hand, there are some considerations you should make as an author.
If you choose to publish your work without the support of a traditional publishing house you lose the benefit of a great deal of experience. Most importantly, you lose access to an impartial editor. I've put down books that are poorly edited again, and never picked them up again. In the worst cases there are authors I will never read again simply due to a series of dumb editing mistakes.
If you don't desire success, or fame, then some of these other things are much less important, but a publisher also offers you marketing, promotion, publicity, and sales management. It can be a lot of work for an author to do.
I think the best approach I have seen so far is to publish in a dead tree format, but to make the first chapter (or three) available on line. I think this is an especially wonderful idea for new authors, who may otherwise have a hard time convincing readers that they have something interesting to say.
Previously published authors may be able to get away with putting new or derivative works on the internet, but I doubt any new author will see a significant audience for his work. Would you commit to spending an hour or two a night in front of your computer to read something by an author you've never heard of when you could be reading slashdot and playing Team Fortress II (or whatever) instead?
-geek@large
This is entirely short sighted, unrealistic, and fails to take into account any real world scenerios.
The internet is a public place, no different from the local shopping mall, grocery store, public library, movie theater, whatever...
When you go to the mall they expect that you will and won't do a number of things, commonly accepted criteria for activity in a public place (read: no shirt, no shoes, no service).
On the internet nobody gives a damn if your in your shorts, but suddenly your not allowed to do any number of things that you could realisticly do physically.
For example, lets say I'm doing market research and I send 50 people to the local mall to run around and look at what kind of (product) is being sold, and how many of them, and how much they cost. This is perfectly legitimate, and legal since that information is publicly available. I probably can't go into the stock room and see how many of (product) are not on the shelves, but I can certianly just have a look around the store (just like anyone else).
If we apply the latest internet precidents to this senerio I would NOT be allowed to do this without breaking the law. Suddenly I would be using that stores resources and denying them use of that resource for whatever reason they deemed more important. So I'm not allowed to go the store if I'm just window shopping now?
Publicly accessable resources are held up to a very high standard. Anyone can find out how much a store charges for , this is good for everyone, the store, the customers, the manufacturers.... The same applies (or should apply) to the internet.
As far as purely internet related impact is concerned, can anyone who hosts a site look through their server logs and sue anyone who connects to their site to much? Or all those search engines that come through on a regular basis? Or anyone that pre-caches the site automatically (gee, this is even a feature in Internet Explore... more MS trials?).
My opinion: The internet is a public place, and fair use of a public place is already governed by a certian set of rules and regulations (at least here in the US). Let these rules and regulations do their job and stop creating "special regulation" for a situation that isn't radically different from anything else we humans do on this planet. Just because you do something on the internet doesn't mean it requires special regulation. -Gentry
The key to this is that the data is encrypted just before it is transmitted, implying that if it was encrypted any other way prior to "now" that it does exsist in an unencrypted form on your system during the conversion process...
This seems like a waste of clock cycles if you ask me. Not to mention the fact (I believe a million people brought this up already) that it's only using 56-bit encryption (likely for two good reasons: it keeps the hardware cheap and the decryption method is fast enough to ensure that you can decrypt the massive quantity of data that is being transmitted...) so it won't be long before they have to start zotting keys...
oof... doesn't matter anyway, no consumer in their right mind would buy this piece this crap, it'll be too expensive with virtually no pay off....
-geek@large