First, referring to the USPS as 'The Postman' is a bit demeaning, I'd say.
The USPS has been at the leading edge of technology in many cases. As another poster mentioned, do a Google for Linux USPS and see what you find.
I speak from first-hand experience: I have worked on USPS' Linux systems. They have over 5000 dual-CPU boxes running Linux, sorting mail at real-time speeds (which is 13 pieces per second, mind you). The USPS handles 40% of the world's postal mail. They process over 500 million pieces of mail each and every working day.
The USPS also has a huge network of SGI boxen deployed, again reading and sorting addresses (but this time those that were missed by the Linux boxes).
With the current mess at ICANN, NSI, etc. do you think the USPS could have done any worse?
And BTW: before you take potshots at the $0.37 FC postage rates, check the rates at other countries in Europe, f'rinstance.
I have personally seen farmers deliver chicken hatchlings, ducks, etc. to the USPS for delivery, I kid you not. Live cargo! Lets see FedEx/UPS do anything even close.
While I understand your passion, think about this: there are 1000s of "rich bastards" wasting a ton of money on self-gratification each and every day. For example: consider Mark Cuban (the Broadcast.com guy). He spent millions on buying the Dallas Mavericks, and a private jet for himself. I'm sure the cost of Fossett's adventures pales in comparison to that. But at least Fossett's adventures have some scientific value (he's pushing the boundaries of endurance, or helping develop new technology to achieve his goals).
Consider horse racing (Kentucky Derby, Preakness, Belmont). I'm sure the owners spends way more than $300K on their prized horses.
You can probably spend days listing how the overly-rich waste^H^H^H^H^Hspend their money. But who am I to tell them what to do with it? Isn't that the point of making money: freedom to do as you please with it?
OK, this URL does not exist (or has been taken down). But you can watch the 'slashdot effect' live, in action. View the error_log of the server, and see the number of hits to this missing URL.
I know this is offtopic, but just had to throw it out...:-)
Some people seem to forget that the real villain here is the US Government, who made DMCA into law.
Yep. Murderers don't kill people; guns do! Don't send the murderers to jail; go after the gun manufacturers.
The USC made a stupid law; just because a stupid law exists it does not mean that it should be used to quash legitimate research. If Carly had half a brain, she would fire the idiot VP and apologize to Snosoft. But don't count on it happening anytime soon.
I make it a point to swap my cards with my buddies every few months or so. It would be fun to see the looks on the faces of the Data Miners at the local KwikiMart when the single Belgian guy suddenly starts buying enough curry and Indian groceries to feed a family of 4... <grin>
Let me reiterate: I know that lives are much, much more important than money! But it would be very hard to quantify the lost lives due to this negligence; however, if you wanted to calculate the cost of the false alarms, all you have to do is count them and multiply by the average cost of a call.
Secondly: I am not a Microsoft basher (though I don't like many of their practices). I asked this question because I know people who work in the emergency services (cops, firemen, EMTs) and I know how hard they work.
Thirdly, the Coporate World only understands the langudage of money. They really don't give a rats ass for anything else. Their only responsibility is to their shareholders and the bottom line. By putting a dollar figure on their negligence (see point #4 too), you are forcing them to act.
Just a couple of days ago, 18 million pounds of ground meat was recalled due to potential contamination with a deadly bacteria (E. Coli). The company (ConAgra) knows that if someone dies, their ass will be sued all the way to hell. So, they're doing "the right thing" by recalling the meat.
Finally: Microsoft has the ability to update the MSNTV/WebTV box while it is sitting in the customer's house. The customer is paying for a monthly service for this maintenance. So, in a sense, Microsoft still has control of the box. Hence the liability comes in.
Compared to that I say BOLLOCKS to the small amount of taxpayer dollars it costs you.
While I understand your passion, I was trying to simplify things. I am well aware that tying the emergency services costs lives, and that lives are much, much more important than money. But quantifying this "tying" is difficult to do. On the other hand, it is easy to calculate the cost of these false alarms: x false alarms at the rate of average y dollars each = x*y dollars.
This is bad, because 911 services cost real taxpayer money. The question is: can Microsoft be held liable for wasting my taxpayer dollars because of their product's flaws?
Re:Anyone know anything more about this?
on
Triangle Boy Lives
·
· Score: 3, Informative
How does it work? What does "stealth" mean in this context? Why wouldn't it be blocked by people having firewalls explicitly for the purpose of locking someone in?
IIRC, the data is sent to your machine via forged UDP packets. The client on your machine (which is also the proxy for your machine) then reassembles the packets and forwards them to your browser.
This prolly will stay at score 2, but here's the scoop on the IDs: the Airlines started asking for IDs, and not the FAA. This is because they wanted to kill the resale market in tickets. Speculators were buying/selling tickets, and cutting the airlines out of the profits. To prevent this, the airlines started asking for IDs to make sure that the person who bought the tickets was indeed the one flying.
An ID makes absolutely no difference to the security . The perps of 9/11 all had valid IDs. Some posters say that they had "deportation orders" against some of them; even so, it wouldn't have made a difference because airlines don't check against any 'deportation lists'. Even if they did, I can get a passable fake Drivers License for a couple of 100 bucks. And what does the gate attendant in, say, Boston know about an (say) Alaskan DL? They all look different! The airline attendants don't specialise in ID verification; they are ticket agents, for crying out loud!
"Editorial independance" (sic) lasts only as long as they don't get sued by Micro$oft over some trivial little exploit that gets posted on SecurityFocus. After that, "independance" goes out the window, and the answer is "how high?" (IYKWIM).
NLM's site does OCR (reading "machine-printed" text). The poster wants to do ICR (read "handwritten text"). There are very few companies that do this; and AFAIK there are no public domain/OSS/freeware solutions.
How many pages are we talking about? And at what resolution are they scanned? Anything below 256DPI for handwritten is not worth it.
The cost of the 476 machines is pegged at between $3M and $4M. Assuming $3.5M (midpoint), it works out to $7352 per machine; assuming NZDs, that comes to about USD 3564 per machine. Since no HDD is mentioned, they most probably do no have any.
Assuming all the assumptions above were correct, how does the cost compare to something comparable stateside? Of course, I'm ignoring the "100Gbps" network(!) and the Foundry switches, but I don't think they'll add more than a couple of hundred bucks per machine _at most_.
It is nice to think that a farmer could use such a device to get prices on equipment and such from around the world, however, what good will it do them? They still will probably be forced to buy what is easily provided.
In a fairly efficient market (like the USA), you take a lot of things for granted. However, things are a bit different in India. There are a lot of middlemen involved, and information is a scarce commodity (I'm speaking of market information). In this situation, an "enabling device" like this Simputer can make a difference. There's no guarantee that it will, but there's a possibility that it will. And that is all that one can hope for.
If a farmer can, through a simple search, figure out the best (selling) prices for his corn/wheat/cotton/etc. in the neighborhood, he can take advantage of that. This information then gets translated into real rupees in his pocket.
Heck, even decent weather forecasts can mean a lot to most of them.
We have to stop pigeon-holing the Internet into a fixed perceived role. What uses a, say, aborogine in Australia has for the Internet is best determined by her, and not by someone like me sitting here in the USA. I say provide people with the tools, and see what they make of them.
The newly(!) constructed Highway 407 near Toronto also has cameras which snap your license plate and then bill you. As a Noo Yawker, I thought I was immune from this, and gleefully used it. Unfortunately, a month later a bill ended up on my doorstep. (which begs the question: how did Canadians get my home address from my license plate?) Still a Noo Yawker, I decided to ignore it until they started using the magic words "collection agency". Then I had to fight back. So I asked them: give me proof that I used your highway. Send me a copy of this "photo" that you took of my plates. Presto! No more bills!:-) Hee hee...
Joking aside, it is possible for the deaf to listen to music. For example, Edison used to bite into the phonograph to hear it, since he was mostly deaf in the later years.
It was only a matter of time before Ebay's BillPoint would have pulled the rug from under PayPal's feet. EBay should have stuck with BillPoint, offering their customers incentives to switch to BillPoint. Eventually, they would have made inroads into PayPal's marketshare. It would have taken a year or two, but in the end it would have been much cheaper than $1.5b that they spent.
Slashdot Mirror
Spoken like a true geek.
you'd be best to avoid them and go back to playing with your Palm in the back corner.
No pun intended, I assume?
The USPS has been at the leading edge of technology in many cases. As another poster mentioned, do a Google for Linux USPS and see what you find. I speak from first-hand experience: I have worked on USPS' Linux systems. They have over 5000 dual-CPU boxes running Linux, sorting mail at real-time speeds (which is 13 pieces per second, mind you). The USPS handles 40% of the world's postal mail. They process over 500 million pieces of mail each and every working day.
The USPS also has a huge network of SGI boxen deployed, again reading and sorting addresses (but this time those that were missed by the Linux boxes).
With the current mess at ICANN, NSI, etc. do you think the USPS could have done any worse?
And BTW: before you take potshots at the $0.37 FC postage rates, check the rates at other countries in Europe, f'rinstance.
I have personally seen farmers deliver chicken hatchlings, ducks, etc. to the USPS for delivery, I kid you not. Live cargo! Lets see FedEx/UPS do anything even close.
For example: consider Mark Cuban (the Broadcast.com guy). He spent millions on buying the Dallas Mavericks, and a private jet for himself. I'm sure the cost of Fossett's adventures pales in comparison to that. But at least Fossett's adventures have some scientific value (he's pushing the boundaries of endurance, or helping develop new technology to achieve his goals).
Consider horse racing (Kentucky Derby, Preakness, Belmont). I'm sure the owners spends way more than $300K on their prized horses.
You can probably spend days listing how the overly-rich waste^H^H^H^H^Hspend their money. But who am I to tell them what to do with it? Isn't that the point of making money: freedom to do as you please with it?
But you can watch the 'slashdot effect' live, in action. View the error_log of the server, and see the number of hits to this missing URL.
I know this is offtopic, but just had to throw it out... :-)
Yep. Murderers don't kill people; guns do! Don't send the murderers to jail; go after the gun manufacturers.
The USC made a stupid law; just because a stupid law exists it does not mean that it should be used to quash legitimate research. If Carly had half a brain, she would fire the idiot VP and apologize to Snosoft. But don't count on it happening anytime soon.
Visit:l
http://epistolary.org/rob/bonuscard/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/28/25626.htm
I make it a point to swap my cards with my buddies every few months or so. It would be fun to see the looks on the faces of the Data Miners at the local KwikiMart when the single Belgian guy suddenly starts buying enough curry and Indian groceries to feed a family of 4... <grin>
ARGH! You guys make up your minds: is it 138888 or 138889 ??? The suspense is killing me.
Secondly: I am not a Microsoft basher (though I don't like many of their practices). I asked this question because I know people who work in the emergency services (cops, firemen, EMTs) and I know how hard they work.
Thirdly, the Coporate World only understands the langudage of money. They really don't give a rats ass for anything else. Their only responsibility is to their shareholders and the bottom line. By putting a dollar figure on their negligence (see point #4 too), you are forcing them to act.
Just a couple of days ago, 18 million pounds of ground meat was recalled due to potential contamination with a deadly bacteria (E. Coli). The company (ConAgra) knows that if someone dies, their ass will be sued all the way to hell. So, they're doing "the right thing" by recalling the meat.
Finally: Microsoft has the ability to update the MSNTV/WebTV box while it is sitting in the customer's house. The customer is paying for a monthly service for this maintenance. So, in a sense, Microsoft still has control of the box. Hence the liability comes in.
While I understand your passion, I was trying to simplify things. I am well aware that tying the emergency services costs lives, and that lives are much, much more important than money. But quantifying this "tying" is difficult to do. On the other hand, it is easy to calculate the cost of these false alarms: x false alarms at the rate of average y dollars each = x*y dollars.
This is bad, because 911 services cost real taxpayer money. The question is: can Microsoft be held liable for wasting my taxpayer dollars because of their product's flaws?
IIRC, the data is sent to your machine via forged UDP packets. The client on your machine (which is also the proxy for your machine) then reassembles the packets and forwards them to your browser.
Checkout the TriangleBoy Whitepaper
print ((rand() < 0.5) ? "Definitely yes" : "Outlook cloudy"), "\n";
Let the contest begin... :-)
print ((rand()
Let the contest begin... :-)
An ID makes absolutely no difference to the security . The perps of 9/11 all had valid IDs. Some posters say that they had "deportation orders" against some of them; even so, it wouldn't have made a difference because airlines don't check against any 'deportation lists'. Even if they did, I can get a passable fake Drivers License for a couple of 100 bucks. And what does the gate attendant in, say, Boston know about an (say) Alaskan DL? They all look different! The airline attendants don't specialise in ID verification; they are ticket agents, for crying out loud!
"Editorial independance" (sic) lasts only as long as they don't get sued by Micro$oft over some trivial little exploit that gets posted on SecurityFocus. After that, "independance" goes out the window, and the answer is "how high?" (IYKWIM).
How many pages are we talking about? And at what resolution are they scanned? Anything below 256DPI for handwritten is not worth it.
Assuming all the assumptions above were correct, how does the cost compare to something comparable stateside? Of course, I'm ignoring the "100Gbps" network(!) and the Foundry switches, but I don't think they'll add more than a couple of hundred bucks per machine _at most_.
No, I haven't read the article. Is that necessary?
In a fairly efficient market (like the USA), you take a lot of things for granted. However, things are a bit different in India. There are a lot of middlemen involved, and information is a scarce commodity (I'm speaking of market information). In this situation, an "enabling device" like this Simputer can make a difference. There's no guarantee that it will, but there's a possibility that it will. And that is all that one can hope for.
If a farmer can, through a simple search, figure out the best (selling) prices for his corn/wheat/cotton/etc. in the neighborhood, he can take advantage of that. This information then gets translated into real rupees in his pocket.
Heck, even decent weather forecasts can mean a lot to most of them.
We have to stop pigeon-holing the Internet into a fixed perceived role. What uses a, say, aborogine in Australia has for the Internet is best determined by her, and not by someone like me sitting here in the USA. I say provide people with the tools, and see what they make of them.
Hee hee...
No, you're thinking of the "640K of memory should be more than enough" attitude (as in "2 digits should be more than enough").
It was only a matter of time before Ebay's BillPoint would have pulled the rug from under PayPal's feet. EBay should have stuck with BillPoint, offering their customers incentives to switch to BillPoint. Eventually, they would have made inroads into PayPal's marketshare. It would have taken a year or two, but in the end it would have been much cheaper than $1.5b that they spent.
Not to mention the fact that a wounded person screaming away nearby is a big morale damper for his/her buddies.