To be exact: It's using the medium voltage grid to transport data to the NOC. You access the internet via 802.11b access points on the poles.
From the article: These wireless "boxes" convert data so they can be sent through the grid and on to PUC's fibre-optic backbone, which connects to the Internet. Home computers equipped with 802.11b or "Wi-Fi" wireless access cards and within 150 metres of these access points will be able to use the service.
So basically what they're doing is something I did over 10 years ago -- power grid data transmission -- this isn't new, and it isn't cool; it's just over medium voltage. They're not passing data through the pole pigs into your outlets; they're avoiding that because they are not designed to transmit data. Once you're on the neighbourhood grid there are no transformers until the substation; They are essentially modulating high speed data over copper lines. Nothing new, except for the voltages involved. And isolation takes care of all of that.:-)
I rather liked Atlantis and Emperor's New Groove... I tottally agree with you on the others though... They're out of ideas and are trying to cash in on previous successes.
Disney lost all respect of me when they started rebranding old films with the most idiotic plots imaginable just to cash in on the old name... Lion King II, Hunchback of Notre Dame II, 101 Dalmatains II, Atlantis II, Tarzan and Jane, Cinderella II... The originals were amazing, the sequels had nothing to make them appealing. The storylines were bland, the animation no better than a decent TV cartoon, the characters had all the life sucked out of them.
Disney had an amazing name to stand on. The current cast of execs and story managers is tarnishing that name. I would by far look for the Pixar name today before the Disney name.
I was under the impression that the *only* thing that the serial number stood for was a numeric sequence that the nameservers checked against to see if it had an older version of the record.
I know of several people who use straight numeric serial numbers (i.e. '1', '2', '3') and haven't had any issues since they still increment it when they make changes on the master and the slaves all see the serial # is different and update.
The reason I ask is for the old venerable OrCAD 386 SDT and PCB programs... 800x600 just doesn't cut it, and that old program is still way ahead of what they've put out today in terms of ease of use, functionality and keyboard support.
I know about Eagle's cross-platform abilities and all the other win32-only ones but to be honest, none of them seem to have that right mix of keyboard use, navigation and plain old workability. I'm rapidly running out of systems that OrCAD 386 will run on.:-(
MythTV can handle the ATI cards? Every time I asked about it I got some very chilly responses basically saying not to piss around with it and just get a PVR250/350.
Re:Screw weird, this is the *COOL* present thread!
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Weird Presents Anyone?
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· Score: 1
Bah. My brother got me The Complete Far Side -- That's something I never would have expected to get from anyone. Awesome.:-)
P200 with decent screen?!
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Linux Toys
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· Score: 1
By the way, these things do cost a lot commercially, while P200 and lower laptops are virtually free.
Where do you find a P200 with a decent wide-angle TFT screen that hasn't got the fluorescent tube dimmed out/grayed up/flickering??
The GPU is the video processor. What's on the display is somewhere in video memory. So long as you're not writing to the particular section of video memory that is being used to show things on screen, you will see nothing. I often use video memory for swap on Linux since I never am in anything but textmode and you can't seem to buy cheap video cards with small amounts of memory.
I guess that I'm fortunate -- There is only one cell tower in my town (5300 people) I might be in the range of the second one but there just aren't three anywhere close to me.
Moot point, not mute point... That's right up there with "all intensive purposes" -- not blasting you, just trying to help you not look like an idiot in the future.:-)
So does that mean the "mother" can choose to "pull the plug" at any time, and then "donate" the eggs to this kind of research? Remember, the egg is braindead, it can't make decisions for itself...
The Project Information page lists two 1.5W bidirectional amplifiers. But you are right, two primestar dishes with modified feedhorns, that's good for about 30dB of gain per dish/feedhorn assembly.
XFS will ruin your day if you unplug the computer by accident, nosy dog or act of northeastern powergrid. Ext3 will just take a minute longer to reboot than normal.
Cites? References? They're both journalled filesystems. What's the point of journalling if it can't handle unclean shutdown?
This [windows system configuration] has never been an issue for me, since TechNet documents just about anything you need to know. Understanding how the registry works helps a lot, too, and Ive never found the registry to be a single point of failure (well, misconfiguration can be that on any platform).
Any time I've tried to find out anything nontrivial on TechNet I've come up empty. A recent example was optimizing SMB to tell it that it was perfectly fine to fragment packets so that I could get better TCP/IP SMB throughput.
Ive been working on Windows servers for almost ten years, and I have yet to even see an NDA.
Good for you. Now try doing anything that has you digging around in kernelspace. Oh, or how about working with SMB? That's under NDA these days.
Ah, the typical Slashdot line makes its appearence. This is like when a Republican cant think of anything to say, so they just shout "Well, Clinton got a blow-job!"
I could care less about the typical slashdot line. Microsoft's been proven time and time again that they're using their monopoly to stifle competition (and innovation, by extension) -- I've got plenty of meat to my original post, this was just another datapoint. Clinton's blowjob doesn't have anything to do with his ability to lead a nation. His lying about it was the problem. Same thing with MS. Being the 800-lb gorilla isn't inherently bad. It's when you use your position to beat down competition that it becomes a problem.
I say thank goodness for MS flipping everyone the bird and including components into the OS, so you could just buy the OS and have a network client, or a computer which can access the internet, all without having to purchase and install three seperate pieces of software.
Oh yeah, thank you MS for embracing and extending so many technologies and locking everyone in to the MS way of doing things. That's made life so much better...
You're absolutely right about creating a common platform but interop is also very important... and to get interop you need open protocols and UNEXTENDED protocols. MS is not keen on either. And now enter DRM and DMCA and you've got MS' wet dream: total vendor lock-in.
If most companies had Linux systems, they would need to pay for the privilege of getting it fixed; more people know how to support MS than Linux, and they are most likely already employees.
It all comes back to my orignal post -- oftentimes the only fucking way to solve a nontrivial problem with MS is to format, reinstall and restore from backup. Even if you can get the system back online, it's unstable because something is wonky and you just can't get to what... Or, if you've cast the right incantations and sacrificed to the right board members, you know exactly where the problem is but can't replace just that one subsystem. On Linux I have never ever had to do fix a software problem by restoring from backup, and oftentimes correcting the problem was far faster than a total reinstall. Any monkey can say they support Windows and their typical response is "reboot, hmm ok, reinstall" -- I don't know of any other operating system where that is SOP and acceptable. You can have tons of "windows support" if that's their response.
I cant for the life of me figure out how this would apply to any real-world scenarios... Its basically like me saying its Ford's fault that my fan belt broke, and they should be responsible for fixing it. Heaven forbid you bring the car in to a mechanic...
Win95 support has been terminated. You can't upgrade your Win95 system for whatever reason. You're fucked. If you have a RedHat 5 system you can still solve the problem and continue on. There's no forced-upgrade cycle. Of course you pay for the privilege, but you can still get done what you need. It's just like drive recovery... You were stupid/unlucky enough to not have a backup, you're gonna pay to get your data back. But you can still (wi
Its also quite easy for people to make fun of things they dont understand; I love how people always say MS stuff is simplistic, until they need to fix it. Then they just say its poorly designed. Maybe if they spent time trying to understand how the OS or application does things, instead of complaining about it, they could fix it.
Actually that's not my problem with Windows. My problem is that it's too complex, too convoluted, and simply lacks the tools to properly diagnose and repair. Sure you can buy third party tools to make up for some of these deficiencies but I'd rather use Linux. The configuration for pretty much everything is plain text and documented freely instead of hidden behind a single-point-of-failure binary registry and anonymous GID identifiers. The system internals are all public and I can access any part of it I need without gagging NDAs and/or paying for the privilege and finally -- I am not tied to one megacorp with a penchant for monopolistic practises and stifling innovation. I have enough problems with running a business that I don't need to compound the issue by welcoming the vampire into my house.
Basically my beef with Windows and my desire to use Linux stems from the simple fact that when something does go wrong, I can fix it far easier and without paying for the privilege. And in those cases when Microsoft is either unwilling or unable to fix something, I can always hire a programmer to fix it for me.
Slashdot Mirror
To be exact: It's using the medium voltage grid to transport data to the NOC. You access the internet via 802.11b access points on the poles.
From the article:
These wireless "boxes" convert data so they can be sent through the grid and on to PUC's fibre-optic backbone, which connects to the Internet. Home computers equipped with 802.11b or "Wi-Fi" wireless access cards and within 150 metres of these access points will be able to use the service.
So basically what they're doing is something I did over 10 years ago -- power grid data transmission -- this isn't new, and it isn't cool; it's just over medium voltage. They're not passing data through the pole pigs into your outlets; they're avoiding that because they are not designed to transmit data. Once you're on the neighbourhood grid there are no transformers until the substation; They are essentially modulating high speed data over copper lines. Nothing new, except for the voltages involved. And isolation takes care of all of that. :-)
Holy shit that is one of the NASTIEST websites I've ever run across... jesus that is cluttered...
I rather liked Atlantis and Emperor's New Groove... I tottally agree with you on the others though... They're out of ideas and are trying to cash in on previous successes.
Disney lost all respect of me when they started rebranding old films with the most idiotic plots imaginable just to cash in on the old name... Lion King II, Hunchback of Notre Dame II, 101 Dalmatains II, Atlantis II, Tarzan and Jane, Cinderella II... The originals were amazing, the sequels had nothing to make them appealing. The storylines were bland, the animation no better than a decent TV cartoon, the characters had all the life sucked out of them.
Disney had an amazing name to stand on. The current cast of execs and story managers is tarnishing that name. I would by far look for the Pixar name today before the Disney name.
I know that B is not literally two 's's, but at least *I* still think the protein called "ass" is kind of humorous.
I was under the impression that the *only* thing that the serial number stood for was a numeric sequence that the nameservers checked against to see if it had an older version of the record.
I know of several people who use straight numeric serial numbers (i.e. '1', '2', '3') and haven't had any issues since they still increment it when they make changes on the master and the slaves all see the serial # is different and update.
The reason I ask is for the old venerable OrCAD 386 SDT and PCB programs... 800x600 just doesn't cut it, and that old program is still way ahead of what they've put out today in terms of ease of use, functionality and keyboard support.
I know about Eagle's cross-platform abilities and all the other win32-only ones but to be honest, none of them seem to have that right mix of keyboard use, navigation and plain old workability. I'm rapidly running out of systems that OrCAD 386 will run on. :-(
MythTV can handle the ATI cards? Every time I asked about it I got some very chilly responses basically saying not to piss around with it and just get a PVR250/350.
Bah. My brother got me The Complete Far Side -- That's something I never would have expected to get from anyone. Awesome. :-)
By the way, these things do cost a lot commercially, while P200 and lower laptops are virtually free.
Where do you find a P200 with a decent wide-angle TFT screen that hasn't got the fluorescent tube dimmed out/grayed up/flickering??
That sounds really interesting. Could you point me at a how-to or something to pull that off?
Sure. Google's a good friend here. :-)
The GPU is the video processor. What's on the display is somewhere in video memory. So long as you're not writing to the particular section of video memory that is being used to show things on screen, you will see nothing. I often use video memory for swap on Linux since I never am in anything but textmode and you can't seem to buy cheap video cards with small amounts of memory.
Reminds me of the good old days when you used the processors in the C64 tapedrive to compute stuff. Wouldn't want to waste those precious cycles.
Actually it was the old 1540/1541 and later 1571/1581 disk drives. The tape drive did not have a processor in it.
I was under the impression that aircraft carriers _were_ practically floating cities.
Nice pic and explanation.
I guess that I'm fortunate -- There is only one cell tower in my town (5300 people) I might be in the range of the second one but there just aren't three anywhere close to me.
Moot point, not mute point... That's right up there with "all intensive purposes" -- not blasting you, just trying to help you not look like an idiot in the future. :-)
So does that mean the "mother" can choose to "pull the plug" at any time, and then "donate" the eggs to this kind of research? Remember, the egg is braindead, it can't make decisions for itself...
Happens all the time. c.f. abortion.
Not with 370ms ping times...
The Project Information page lists two 1.5W bidirectional amplifiers. But you are right, two primestar dishes with modified feedhorns, that's good for about 30dB of gain per dish/feedhorn assembly.
XFS will ruin your day if you unplug the computer by accident, nosy dog or act of northeastern powergrid. Ext3 will just take a minute longer to reboot than normal.
Cites? References? They're both journalled filesystems. What's the point of journalling if it can't handle unclean shutdown?
You can program anything in RLL. Not that you'd want to--but your Client probably wants you to.
Amen to that... How I loathe PLCs... ugh.
Like this? It is a little slow at the moment but works very well.
This [windows system configuration] has never been an issue for me, since TechNet documents just about anything you need to know. Understanding how the registry works helps a lot, too, and Ive never found the registry to be a single point of failure (well, misconfiguration can be that on any platform).
Any time I've tried to find out anything nontrivial on TechNet I've come up empty. A recent example was optimizing SMB to tell it that it was perfectly fine to fragment packets so that I could get better TCP/IP SMB throughput.
Ive been working on Windows servers for almost ten years, and I have yet to even see an NDA.
Good for you. Now try doing anything that has you digging around in kernelspace. Oh, or how about working with SMB? That's under NDA these days.
Ah, the typical Slashdot line makes its appearence. This is like when a Republican cant think of anything to say, so they just shout "Well, Clinton got a blow-job!"
I could care less about the typical slashdot line. Microsoft's been proven time and time again that they're using their monopoly to stifle competition (and innovation, by extension) -- I've got plenty of meat to my original post, this was just another datapoint. Clinton's blowjob doesn't have anything to do with his ability to lead a nation. His lying about it was the problem. Same thing with MS. Being the 800-lb gorilla isn't inherently bad. It's when you use your position to beat down competition that it becomes a problem.
I say thank goodness for MS flipping everyone the bird and including components into the OS, so you could just buy the OS and have a network client, or a computer which can access the internet, all without having to purchase and install three seperate pieces of software.
Oh yeah, thank you MS for embracing and extending so many technologies and locking everyone in to the MS way of doing things. That's made life so much better...
You're absolutely right about creating a common platform but interop is also very important... and to get interop you need open protocols and UNEXTENDED protocols. MS is not keen on either. And now enter DRM and DMCA and you've got MS' wet dream: total vendor lock-in.
If most companies had Linux systems, they would need to pay for the privilege of getting it fixed; more people know how to support MS than Linux, and they are most likely already employees.
It all comes back to my orignal post -- oftentimes the only fucking way to solve a nontrivial problem with MS is to format, reinstall and restore from backup. Even if you can get the system back online, it's unstable because something is wonky and you just can't get to what... Or, if you've cast the right incantations and sacrificed to the right board members, you know exactly where the problem is but can't replace just that one subsystem. On Linux I have never ever had to do fix a software problem by restoring from backup, and oftentimes correcting the problem was far faster than a total reinstall. Any monkey can say they support Windows and their typical response is "reboot, hmm ok, reinstall" -- I don't know of any other operating system where that is SOP and acceptable. You can have tons of "windows support" if that's their response.
I cant for the life of me figure out how this would apply to any real-world scenarios... Its basically like me saying its Ford's fault that my fan belt broke, and they should be responsible for fixing it. Heaven forbid you bring the car in to a mechanic...
Win95 support has been terminated. You can't upgrade your Win95 system for whatever reason. You're fucked. If you have a RedHat 5 system you can still solve the problem and continue on. There's no forced-upgrade cycle. Of course you pay for the privilege, but you can still get done what you need. It's just like drive recovery... You were stupid/unlucky enough to not have a backup, you're gonna pay to get your data back. But you can still (wi
Its also quite easy for people to make fun of things they dont understand; I love how people always say MS stuff is simplistic, until they need to fix it. Then they just say its poorly designed. Maybe if they spent time trying to understand how the OS or application does things, instead of complaining about it, they could fix it.
Actually that's not my problem with Windows. My problem is that it's too complex, too convoluted, and simply lacks the tools to properly diagnose and repair. Sure you can buy third party tools to make up for some of these deficiencies but I'd rather use Linux. The configuration for pretty much everything is plain text and documented freely instead of hidden behind a single-point-of-failure binary registry and anonymous GID identifiers. The system internals are all public and I can access any part of it I need without gagging NDAs and/or paying for the privilege and finally -- I am not tied to one megacorp with a penchant for monopolistic practises and stifling innovation. I have enough problems with running a business that I don't need to compound the issue by welcoming the vampire into my house.
Basically my beef with Windows and my desire to use Linux stems from the simple fact that when something does go wrong, I can fix it far easier and without paying for the privilege. And in those cases when Microsoft is either unwilling or unable to fix something, I can always hire a programmer to fix it for me.
Perhaps, but I'd certainly settle for state-run cable/DSL with that same fibre running to every major subdivision instead of every house.