How many fibers will government provide to profit making businesses? Why should my tax money be given to businesses so they can make more money?
As many as they want to pay for - typically one pair each time the business signs up a new customer. I'm not suggesting giving the fiber away for free. The idea is for the city to pay for the up front costs, and then make it back leasing access to anyone for a reasonable rate.
In the GGP, the government would also own switching infrastructure, and possibly also operate the services. I oppose this, because it is easy for private companies to compete on these parts, once the last mile is provided. Government involvement in services offered would cause stagnation. The government isn't good at adapting quickly as new technologies come out. Fiber is a good enough long-term investment that this is OK, but I'd rather have a bunch of private companies trying to figure out how to connect them to faster and faster switches, and offering new and better services, as fast as they are able to figure out how to do it economically.
public network run as a wholesale service whereby the service providers buy capacity and resell it
That's more than the government needs to be involved in to fix things. All they need to do is provide *fiber* for service providers to resell. Keep it to the absolute minimum that has a natural monopoly, and let the market take care of everything where competition can be provided.
He's at the top... everybody else is below him and reports to him. What are they going to do if he says no, fire him?
The whole point of three way checks and balances in US politics is that *no one* is at the top. The other two branches explicitly do not report to the president, and ideally, he reports to the people and the Constitution. How well this works in practice has been the subject of occasional debate.
So yes, please fire him if you find he's not living up to expectations in a few years. Call your congresscritter about firing him sooner if it becomes dire. I suggest coming up with a better issue than this one, though.
humid air gets in and immediately condenses into water all over your chilled electronics.
Which is why I suggest keeping the temperature high.
Air conditioners are slightly better. They will dehumidify and clean the air before pumping it in.
Actually, they just form condensation on the coils, and then have a drip pan to carry it outside. Normally they recirculate, and don't pump anything in, for efficiency.
overclockers have been immersing their entire motherboard in mineral oil (or whatever) for ages now. Solves issues with temp, humidity, dirt, etc.
It doesn't solve humidity: It just collects in the bottom of the oil, and eventually you have to get it out before it reaches the motherboard. It's the same problem as the fridge has, just in liquid form.:) Either way, raise the board up a little in case water collects underneath.
Temperature: Mineral oil doesn't directly solve this problem. It gets the heat away from the CPU, but you still have to get it outside of whatever environmental housing you've created. You still need a heat pump of some sort.
Dirt: No, in my opinion, it makes this much worse. Dirt plus air is cleaned up with a feather duster, or canned air. Dirt plus oil is a real mess.
And since we're talking about laptops, I'd be really skeptical of a plan to dunk an entire laptop in oil. It'll destroy the keyboard membrane, internal hard drives, fans, and possibly other parts in short order.
The higher the VA-rating, the longer it will last during a blackout
This is not true at all. VA stands for Volt-Amps. This is similar to watts: Volts times Amps = Watts, but VA measures the peak momentary power at each point on the sine wave, whereas watts measures the average power.
The runtime of a UPS is approximately (battery pack voltage * battery pack amp-hour rating * inverter efficiency) = watt hours.
Since UPS manufacturers are sketchy on the details of their batteries, follow the simple rule of thumb: The runtime of a UPS for a given load is approximately proportional to its weight.
Pure sine doesn't really matter for modern computer power supplies. They cope just fine with square waves. Buck-Boost capability (which allows it to double-convert power to handle over/undervoltage) IS a big plus if you expect extended brownouts: It'll just suck more amps from the line to keep things running instead of running on batteries until it's fixed.
I don't know any off the shelf solution that meets all the requester's needs, but with a little backwoods / third world ingenuity, I think it can be done.
Seconded, start with a laptop. It's already met a whole bunch of your needs. The big missing piece is environmental hardening. Since it only needs to be moderately portable, there are a few things you can do.
#1, put the whole setup in a small refrigerator. Seriously. It's an airtight, watertight box. It'll keep out dust, rain and bugs, in addition to obviously keeping everything cool. Set the temperature as high as it'll go, there's no advantage to keeping the system any cooler than 20-25C, but the cooler you make it, the more problems you'll have with condensation on the evaporator coils. Deal with condensation by keeping down the number of times you open the fridge, and have some microfiber towels under the coils to catch the occasional drips. Loosely wrapping might work, but be careful not to over insulate the coils.
The downside: You'll take a hit on power efficiency, but I'm willing to bet that a decked out laptop and a small fridge pull less power than even the best servers will. Very small fridges based on peltier coolers are even less efficient, but their small size may make up for it. Also plan for what happens when the power goes out: The laptop keeps running, so make sure to have a UPS for the fridge, or that the laptop's battery will die before it gets too hot, or better yet, monitor a temperature sensor, and shut down gracefully when it starts getting too hot.
It's also a good solution because a fridge is relatively easily serviceable or replaceable compared to server parts. You'll need to carry spares for the laptop, of course.
Idea #2: Similar to above, but build your own peltier fridge. The main advantage is that you can make a custom enclosure to hold everything, which will keep the size and weight down.
Idea #3: Just build a hushbox for the laptop. Basically, you build a box around it, with some cooling fans, and furnace filters on the inlets. It'll take care of dust. You might have to shut down in extreme heat, and extreme humidity won't be handled.
Idea #4: Rugged laptops, like the ToughBook. They're ready to handle dust, moisture, physical abuse, etc, and with upgrades, can get near to the specs you're looking for. These might work well in combination with the suggestions above.
People with opinions at the extreme ends of the spectrum might not be right, and the truth lies somewhere in between? Please, give me more of this brilliant analysis.
The entire system is a cruel and unusual punishment.
I qualified it as "as that term is defined" for exactly this reason. While I agree, the failure of the system as a whole is a separate problem from the excesses that are greatly crueler than the usual cases.
Others fear this may lead to 'cruel and unusual punishments'
No, it leads to excessive sentences. Those may be unreasonable and, unfortunately, quite usual, but there's nothing cruel and unusual about them, as that term is defined.
With municipal fiber, the city isn't running any data services either. They just own a piece of glass that goes into your home. What goes down that fiber is entirely the responsibility of the homeowner and whoever they contract with.
Fiber is pretty much the end game, at least for the foreseeable future of datacomms, so I don't think the extra expense of the conduit would really be worthwhile.
Not really. The problem is that all the WISP's will have constrained common bandwidth. They'll provide an alternative for the way people perceive high speed internet today (Load web pages faster and watch some youtube), and help drive prices down for the "small cap" market, but some of us want to watch streaming high qualiity video (Like Netflix). Companies that have a stake in traditional TV distribution (Like Comcast, AT&T, etc) will love WISP's... It lets them pretend they're not a monopoly, even when they're the ones holding up the deployment of a real FTTH network.
I agree, but for an advanced user to be able to upgrade from six releases ago is still quite an accomplishment.
Note that Ubuntu DOES allow upgrading between releases, including between LTS releases, just by clicking in the GUI. That windows can't even do a clean upgrade between two RC's is a notable shortcoming.
Make it harder for companies to have monopolies or duopolies. This is the system that's in place in most areas of the nation outside big cities.
Seconded, and it's not even hard to do. Here's how:
Municipalize the last mile. Take it away from the telco monopolies. Sell access freely to anyone at fair rates as a municipal service, just like water service. Let people plug in any service they want on the other end of the wire. That might be AT&T, giving you phone and internet. It might be some local ISP just giving you DSL and IPTV service. Guaranteed, though, competition will explode overnight.
What, copper's not good enough? Quit waiting for some slow telco to deign to drag it in for you (years and years after we've already paid for it!). Drop some city funds to pull fiber, and start leasing access at fair rates, the same way you did for copper.
The cities that have already done this have *fantastic* service for minimal cost... Other than making a big telco monopoly hate them for the rest of time.
I am not a troll just because you disagree with me.
Are you saying that the 30Gb/s is 'free speech'? People have suddenly stopped making forum posts or blogging to the tune of that overnight? Why would they? Bizarre.
Are you saying that the 30Gb/s is 'fair use'? Although perhaps the view of a minority, it's not commonly seen that pirating games is fair use.
Free speech and fair use aren't limited to forum posts. Free speech and fair use *are* frequently squashed by legislation ostensibly not targeting them. I have personally chosen to say many things anonymously because I am not willing to deal with a remote but real possibility that I'll be dragged into court to prove I'm not a terrorist. Some things I have chosen not to say at all, not because they are illegal, but because lawyers commonly hold them to be within striking distance of poorly written laws.
If the drop in traffic is neither free speech nor fair use, why do you blithely claim it as a likely possibility?
*Something* changed overnight. They have made two unprovable assumptions: First, assuming that it was the legislation that changed the bandwidth usage; second, that the legislation only affected its intended target. My assertions are plausible, though no more provable or sound than theirs. My intent is to point out the fact that their logic is faulty.
Do you have a license to be an idiot?
Hello, I'm from slashdot! My license number is right next to my name. Good to meet you.:)
They are trying to patent a *technique for evaluating* offshoring.
I love reading/. for the news, but the constant need to deliberately misinterpret the news to spin it into some kind of hysteria is tiresome... This place is Fox for Nerds, News You Can Read Somewhere Between the Lines.
If you're curious why that happens, pry up a keycap. They pop off easily. The control keys are easy to get at.
In the NMB mechanism, the click is provided by the white cam lever on the back, while the electrical contacts are visible if you look down the front. There's a blade of plastic holding them apart that slides down when you press the key. It's timed so it falls out just as the lever snaps in the back, but it's not *quite* perfect.
In the Model M mechanism, I think the contact is made specifically BY the spring pressing it when it buckles, so you're guaranteed that 100% it will contact if it clicks, and 100% will not if it doesn't. It's a great design. I just wish they made them with lighter springs.
Just press the keycaps back on when you're done. Or not... I leave my caps lock off to make it harder to press by accident.
Remapping won't fix this. This is the kind of deformed keyboard where the enter key is an L shape extending to where the \ should be, and the backspace is only a standard width key, instead of a double-wide.
Unless your remapping software is way cooler than mine is...:)
In the 90s, I got used to typing on an NMB mechanical keyboard. Back then, clicky was taken for granted, and "quiet" keyboards were the unusual ones. And then one day, it finally broke and started typing gibberish...
Over the course of many years, I went through a bunch of the sucky membrane keyboards, always buying the least-bad one I could find, but my typing speed and accuracy were never as good as when I was on my old NMB. I just recently came across one, and snagged it, and it's really eye opening how much more pleasant it is to type on this one. The sound is satisfying, a light click instead of the Model M "chunk", but it's the touch that really matters. There's a subtle resistance, and then falling away just as the key makes contact, and then a hesitation and snap loose when it breaks.
I never did get into the Model M (now Unicomp) craze. They're too loud, and the spring pressure is way too high. The NMB mechanism is very light, but very tactile. My fingers feel like they're just brushing over the keys, instead off banging on them.
The only thing I don't like about this one is that the \ is in the wrong place, to the left of the backspace instead of under it. I'd be in heaven if I could find a keyboard with similar touch and an IBM-standard layout. Anyone know of one? Das Keyboard III is looking like a likely contender, but I'm reluctant to drop that kind of money without being able to test drive it first.
Definitely consider HFSC, as well. Their web site gives a good overview of the advantages over HTB, and the additional complexity shouldn't be a burden for what you're doing.
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How many fibers will government provide to profit making businesses? Why should my tax money be given to businesses so they can make more money?
As many as they want to pay for - typically one pair each time the business signs up a new customer. I'm not suggesting giving the fiber away for free. The idea is for the city to pay for the up front costs, and then make it back leasing access to anyone for a reasonable rate.
In the GGP, the government would also own switching infrastructure, and possibly also operate the services. I oppose this, because it is easy for private companies to compete on these parts, once the last mile is provided. Government involvement in services offered would cause stagnation. The government isn't good at adapting quickly as new technologies come out. Fiber is a good enough long-term investment that this is OK, but I'd rather have a bunch of private companies trying to figure out how to connect them to faster and faster switches, and offering new and better services, as fast as they are able to figure out how to do it economically.
public network run as a wholesale service whereby the service providers buy capacity and resell it
That's more than the government needs to be involved in to fix things. All they need to do is provide *fiber* for service providers to resell. Keep it to the absolute minimum that has a natural monopoly, and let the market take care of everything where competition can be provided.
I've said more about this before.
He's at the top... everybody else is below him and reports to him. What are they going to do if he says no, fire him?
The whole point of three way checks and balances in US politics is that *no one* is at the top. The other two branches explicitly do not report to the president, and ideally, he reports to the people and the Constitution. How well this works in practice has been the subject of occasional debate.
So yes, please fire him if you find he's not living up to expectations in a few years. Call your congresscritter about firing him sooner if it becomes dire. I suggest coming up with a better issue than this one, though.
You've mistaken this for a partisan issue. Both of the dominant American political parties qualify.
humid air gets in and immediately condenses into water all over your chilled electronics.
Which is why I suggest keeping the temperature high.
Air conditioners are slightly better. They will dehumidify and clean the air before pumping it in.
Actually, they just form condensation on the coils, and then have a drip pan to carry it outside. Normally they recirculate, and don't pump anything in, for efficiency.
overclockers have been immersing their entire motherboard in mineral oil (or whatever) for ages now. Solves issues with temp, humidity, dirt, etc.
It doesn't solve humidity: It just collects in the bottom of the oil, and eventually you have to get it out before it reaches the motherboard. It's the same problem as the fridge has, just in liquid form. :) Either way, raise the board up a little in case water collects underneath.
Temperature: Mineral oil doesn't directly solve this problem. It gets the heat away from the CPU, but you still have to get it outside of whatever environmental housing you've created. You still need a heat pump of some sort.
Dirt: No, in my opinion, it makes this much worse. Dirt plus air is cleaned up with a feather duster, or canned air. Dirt plus oil is a real mess.
And since we're talking about laptops, I'd be really skeptical of a plan to dunk an entire laptop in oil. It'll destroy the keyboard membrane, internal hard drives, fans, and possibly other parts in short order.
The higher the VA-rating, the longer it will last during a blackout
This is not true at all. VA stands for Volt-Amps. This is similar to watts: Volts times Amps = Watts, but VA measures the peak momentary power at each point on the sine wave, whereas watts measures the average power.
The runtime of a UPS is approximately (battery pack voltage * battery pack amp-hour rating * inverter efficiency) = watt hours.
Since UPS manufacturers are sketchy on the details of their batteries, follow the simple rule of thumb: The runtime of a UPS for a given load is approximately proportional to its weight.
Pure sine doesn't really matter for modern computer power supplies. They cope just fine with square waves. Buck-Boost capability (which allows it to double-convert power to handle over/undervoltage) IS a big plus if you expect extended brownouts: It'll just suck more amps from the line to keep things running instead of running on batteries until it's fixed.
I don't know any off the shelf solution that meets all the requester's needs, but with a little backwoods / third world ingenuity, I think it can be done.
Seconded, start with a laptop. It's already met a whole bunch of your needs. The big missing piece is environmental hardening. Since it only needs to be moderately portable, there are a few things you can do.
#1, put the whole setup in a small refrigerator. Seriously. It's an airtight, watertight box. It'll keep out dust, rain and bugs, in addition to obviously keeping everything cool. Set the temperature as high as it'll go, there's no advantage to keeping the system any cooler than 20-25C, but the cooler you make it, the more problems you'll have with condensation on the evaporator coils. Deal with condensation by keeping down the number of times you open the fridge, and have some microfiber towels under the coils to catch the occasional drips. Loosely wrapping might work, but be careful not to over insulate the coils.
The downside: You'll take a hit on power efficiency, but I'm willing to bet that a decked out laptop and a small fridge pull less power than even the best servers will. Very small fridges based on peltier coolers are even less efficient, but their small size may make up for it. Also plan for what happens when the power goes out: The laptop keeps running, so make sure to have a UPS for the fridge, or that the laptop's battery will die before it gets too hot, or better yet, monitor a temperature sensor, and shut down gracefully when it starts getting too hot.
It's also a good solution because a fridge is relatively easily serviceable or replaceable compared to server parts. You'll need to carry spares for the laptop, of course.
Idea #2: Similar to above, but build your own peltier fridge. The main advantage is that you can make a custom enclosure to hold everything, which will keep the size and weight down.
Idea #3: Just build a hushbox for the laptop. Basically, you build a box around it, with some cooling fans, and furnace filters on the inlets. It'll take care of dust. You might have to shut down in extreme heat, and extreme humidity won't be handled.
Idea #4: Rugged laptops, like the ToughBook. They're ready to handle dust, moisture, physical abuse, etc, and with upgrades, can get near to the specs you're looking for. These might work well in combination with the suggestions above.
People with opinions at the extreme ends of the spectrum might not be right, and the truth lies somewhere in between? Please, give me more of this brilliant analysis.
The entire system is a cruel and unusual punishment.
I qualified it as "as that term is defined" for exactly this reason. While I agree, the failure of the system as a whole is a separate problem from the excesses that are greatly crueler than the usual cases.
Others fear this may lead to 'cruel and unusual punishments'
No, it leads to excessive sentences. Those may be unreasonable and, unfortunately, quite usual, but there's nothing cruel and unusual about them, as that term is defined.
With municipal fiber, the city isn't running any data services either. They just own a piece of glass that goes into your home. What goes down that fiber is entirely the responsibility of the homeowner and whoever they contract with.
Fiber is pretty much the end game, at least for the foreseeable future of datacomms, so I don't think the extra expense of the conduit would really be worthwhile.
WiMAX or some derivative may solve that though.
Not really. The problem is that all the WISP's will have constrained common bandwidth. They'll provide an alternative for the way people perceive high speed internet today (Load web pages faster and watch some youtube), and help drive prices down for the "small cap" market, but some of us want to watch streaming high qualiity video (Like Netflix). Companies that have a stake in traditional TV distribution (Like Comcast, AT&T, etc) will love WISP's... It lets them pretend they're not a monopoly, even when they're the ones holding up the deployment of a real FTTH network.
I agree, but for an advanced user to be able to upgrade from six releases ago is still quite an accomplishment.
Note that Ubuntu DOES allow upgrading between releases, including between LTS releases, just by clicking in the GUI. That windows can't even do a clean upgrade between two RC's is a notable shortcoming.
PostgreSQL is still a *huge* player (in fact, they're pretty-much the only open-source, fully-transactional DB available).
I love PostgreSQL, but I have to acknowledge:
Firebird
H2
Ingres (ancestor of Postgres)
SQLite
None of these are Oracle-killers, but they are all robust, open-source SQL RDBMSs in their own right.
Make it harder for companies to have monopolies or duopolies. This is the system that's in place in most areas of the nation outside big cities.
Seconded, and it's not even hard to do. Here's how:
Municipalize the last mile. Take it away from the telco monopolies. Sell access freely to anyone at fair rates as a municipal service, just like water service. Let people plug in any service they want on the other end of the wire. That might be AT&T, giving you phone and internet. It might be some local ISP just giving you DSL and IPTV service. Guaranteed, though, competition will explode overnight.
What, copper's not good enough? Quit waiting for some slow telco to deign to drag it in for you (years and years after we've already paid for it!). Drop some city funds to pull fiber, and start leasing access at fair rates, the same way you did for copper.
The cities that have already done this have *fantastic* service for minimal cost... Other than making a big telco monopoly hate them for the rest of time.
Your post should be modded -1 Troll.
I am not a troll just because you disagree with me.
Are you saying that the 30Gb/s is 'free speech'? People have suddenly stopped making forum posts or blogging to the tune of that overnight? Why would they? Bizarre.
Are you saying that the 30Gb/s is 'fair use'? Although perhaps the view of a minority, it's not commonly seen that pirating games is fair use.
Free speech and fair use aren't limited to forum posts. Free speech and fair use *are* frequently squashed by legislation ostensibly not targeting them. I have personally chosen to say many things anonymously because I am not willing to deal with a remote but real possibility that I'll be dragged into court to prove I'm not a terrorist. Some things I have chosen not to say at all, not because they are illegal, but because lawyers commonly hold them to be within striking distance of poorly written laws.
If the drop in traffic is neither free speech nor fair use, why do you blithely claim it as a likely possibility?
*Something* changed overnight. They have made two unprovable assumptions: First, assuming that it was the legislation that changed the bandwidth usage; second, that the legislation only affected its intended target. My assertions are plausible, though no more provable or sound than theirs. My intent is to point out the fact that their logic is faulty.
Do you have a license to be an idiot?
Hello, I'm from slashdot! My license number is right next to my name. Good to meet you. :)
sends a very strong signal that the legislation works.
Or it might be an indicator that the legislation has a chilling effect on free speech and fair use.
Your post advocates a
(x) reasonable
approach to fighting spam. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work.
(x) Slashdot pundits will dismiss it offhand without considering its merits
Specifically, your plan fails to account for
(x) Condescending asshats
(x) Groupthink
(x) Memes
and the following philosophical objections may also apply:
(x) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet form-letter responses are even easier
Furthermore, this is what I think about you:
(x) Sorry dude, but these people will work tirelessly to make sure it won't work.
Who the heck modded this funny? I'm perfectly serious.
They are trying to patent a *technique for evaluating* offshoring.
I love reading /. for the news, but the constant need to deliberately misinterpret the news to spin it into some kind of hysteria is tiresome... This place is Fox for Nerds, News You Can Read Somewhere Between the Lines.
If you're curious why that happens, pry up a keycap. They pop off easily. The control keys are easy to get at.
In the NMB mechanism, the click is provided by the white cam lever on the back, while the electrical contacts are visible if you look down the front. There's a blade of plastic holding them apart that slides down when you press the key. It's timed so it falls out just as the lever snaps in the back, but it's not *quite* perfect.
In the Model M mechanism, I think the contact is made specifically BY the spring pressing it when it buckles, so you're guaranteed that 100% it will contact if it clicks, and 100% will not if it doesn't. It's a great design. I just wish they made them with lighter springs.
Just press the keycaps back on when you're done. Or not... I leave my caps lock off to make it harder to press by accident.
Thank you. I will definitely run by Micro Center and at least try it out.
How much force do the keys take to press? I like a light keyboard, maybe half of what a model M is.
Remapping won't fix this. This is the kind of deformed keyboard where the enter key is an L shape extending to where the \ should be, and the backspace is only a standard width key, instead of a double-wide.
Unless your remapping software is way cooler than mine is... :)
In the 90s, I got used to typing on an NMB mechanical keyboard. Back then, clicky was taken for granted, and "quiet" keyboards were the unusual ones. And then one day, it finally broke and started typing gibberish...
Over the course of many years, I went through a bunch of the sucky membrane keyboards, always buying the least-bad one I could find, but my typing speed and accuracy were never as good as when I was on my old NMB. I just recently came across one, and snagged it, and it's really eye opening how much more pleasant it is to type on this one. The sound is satisfying, a light click instead of the Model M "chunk", but it's the touch that really matters. There's a subtle resistance, and then falling away just as the key makes contact, and then a hesitation and snap loose when it breaks.
I never did get into the Model M (now Unicomp) craze. They're too loud, and the spring pressure is way too high. The NMB mechanism is very light, but very tactile. My fingers feel like they're just brushing over the keys, instead off banging on them.
The only thing I don't like about this one is that the \ is in the wrong place, to the left of the backspace instead of under it. I'd be in heaven if I could find a keyboard with similar touch and an IBM-standard layout. Anyone know of one? Das Keyboard III is looking like a likely contender, but I'm reluctant to drop that kind of money without being able to test drive it first.
I'm glad to help. :)
Definitely consider HFSC, as well. Their web site gives a good overview of the advantages over HTB, and the additional complexity shouldn't be a burden for what you're doing.