From the first three paragraphs of the second TFA:
When Edward Snowden stole the crown jewels of the National Security Agency, he didn’t need to use any sophisticated devices or software or go around any computer firewall.
All he needed, said multiple intelligence community sources, was a few thumb drives and the willingness to exploit a gaping hole in an antiquated security system to rummage at will through the NSA’s servers and take 20,000 documents without leaving a trace.
“It’s 2013 and the NSA is stuck in 2003 technology,” said an intelligence official.
Doesn't look like he is portrayed as 'brilliant'. Just a bad quote taken from the article to 'made you look!'
I second this reference to http://www.winkflash.com./ I have used their service for many years and their quality is very, very good. I have experimented with Costco (used them for a long time), WalMart, CVS and Target. WinkFlash came out to be the least expensive - and they mail your stuff home. No need to trudge to the nearest location to pick up photos. Of course, the negative is that there is no instant gratification. The price at which they are most competitive is the 4 x 6.
As is normal with other online sites, you can save your pictures there etc. But the nice thing is that they have multiple sizes, canvases, books, calendars - all the additional features that online sites give you. I haven't tried most of the other formats.
Last but not least, their single click tweaking to make printed pictures seem better than what you see on screen, they have a setting called 'Enhancement' that tries to compensate for underexposed or overexposed pictures. It has worked for most of my pictures.
They have occasional sales - and no - I am not a salesman for WinkFlash - just a long-time customer.
This article also got Subramanian Swamy taken off the Harvard School professorship. No explanation offered. There was an online petition or two that got the support of many Harvard students and some of the staff. Harvard did not explain anything other than saying that the publication of the article.
My suspicion is that this has happened only because SS is not an American. Noam Chonsky of MIT has held similar firebrand views in the US - but his political views have not had him fired - because he is a Computer Science professor.
SS was a professor of Economics at Harvard - his article had nothing to do with Economics.
Censorship in the US anyone?
Indian Rediff
P.S. I suspect this will get me a Troll moderation - but please, read what I am saying a little dispassionately before rating me a troll. I am NOT supporting SS - but I DO support his right to free speech.
I will answer your question by posting in my Journal. Apologies if this seems irreverent, but the phenomenon requires some writing. I hope you understand. http://slashdot.org/journal/274686
Mod parent up. The number of people that discount the short-term thinking of outsourcing cannot be overstated (parse that - hopefully I wrote it right).
I have looked time and again for over 10 years (having been laid off twice - once directly attributable to outsourcing and the second time to the current downswing) as to when this wave of outsourcng will change.
PHBs will look at the bottom line alone.
Let me give you an example. At a bank I worked at, we had a memo right from the top - for every local hire, there MUST be at least 7 overseas - otherwise the local hire is not allowed. I found the quality of work being done there sucked! Of the 800 odd people on various projects, there were more than 700 offshore - the rest were onshore - and I was privy to those rates. Offshore rates were 1/5 of the onshore equivalent. I remember one of the local bosses railing at one of the onshore representatives of the minions at the quality of code being delivered. It seems if a zero was entered into a field instead of a non-zero number, the web app would crash (or it was something equally stupid - please don't hold me to actual issue).
Given that these banks took such a large amount of money from US taxpayers, the least they should do is to ensure that any new jobs they have are given to onshore people. Instead, they have gone extreme - and are offshoring more than ever. Ingrates R Us.
Background: I am originally from India, one of the original outsourcers and have seen, with mine own eyes, the precipitous fall in quality of the offshore developers. Until about the mid- to late- 90s, things were not so bad. But Y2K changed all that. All and sundry became s/w developers. And the rest, as they say, is history.
Learning the news as I did this morning, I was in tears. I am not a fan of Apple (although I own an iPhone). But Steve Jobs has done in one lifetime, what many, many people put together could not do in many lifetimes. Any one of his achievements would qualify as genius. He has reinvented the term genius. Steve Jobs: May he rest in peace. My thoughts are with his family and with the Apple employees.
The old symbol for Rupee did not exist. You either said Re for Rupee (singular - but hardly used these days since the single Rupee is worth so little) or Rs for Rupees.
Side note: I remember in the old days on the IBM 1403 printers (running with the IBM 1401 machine) there was a symbol that used the space of one character and still printed Rs very close to each other. That was the closest that India ever came to having a symbol for the Rupee.
Until now.
The proposed symbol (which I believe looks very good) is symbolic of a few things: 1) The symbol looks like an R with the vertical leg removed and a horizontal line through it (much like the $ is simply an S with a vertical line | through it). 2) It is also the Hindi symbol for the first letter in the word Rupee in Hindi - with a line through it.
It was 1987. I was in Texas, working for a bank (as a consultant, installing some mainframe software for them), when the VP dropped by and asked whether I would want to see something new. He had an old guy pounding away at a new fangled thing called a personal computer (for them). I was more than happy to indulge him.
Windows 2.0 was it! The key things that I remember doing are that the PC I used had no mouse. Since I was a mainframe type, everything was keyboard based in my prior life. I assumed that there must be special keystrokes that I needed to use to play with the new computer.
Over a period of a few days, I stumbled on the keyboard shortcuts and familiarised myself completely with all of them. The amazing thing is that most of them are still relevant today - and my kids bug me to show them how to switch between windows quickly! In fact, I am amazed at how few people know many of the short cuts and the various ways in which you can play with computer without using the mouse! But I digress.
Next week the VP dropped by again and asked whether I could install a game for him. I went ahead and installed the floppies (and they were real 5.25" floppies - not diskettes). And I started playing my first graphical game - Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards! Long story short - it was a fun few days while we indulged the old man (the Veep) and saw the various aspects of the game.
I remember wondering about the keyboard shortcuts and wishing they were not so complicated.
My next encounter with PCs was not until a couple of years later - Windows 3.1, a mouse and Quicken! And boy did I have a learning curve with the mouse! At first I thought the mouse was optional. It took me a good year or so to start using it without having to think about it.
Actually I have done something similar to this at my home. My kids (now aged 12 and 10) have been using Ubuntu for the past 3-4 years for their school projects. The older one (my daughter) is more resistant to technology in general. She doesn't like using computers:-)
My son has realised that I am never going to buy a Windows PC for him. Leave alone MS Office. The township here uses the Mac. Also, they have seen Windoze on my dual-boot laptop (on Ubuntu right now as I write this) and on my wife's laptop. I have been able to help them with their presentations (using Impress), their documents with Writer and it has been fairly painless.
I believe conditioning is all that is needed to get kids to realise that there is more than one way to do things. Getting them used to 3 operating systems at this young age and getting to see that it is nothing different has been uplifting. They have learned to live with this - and even enjoy the wider variety of games available for Ubuntu.
I also know that I am probably the only parent that does this with his kids. As a matter of fact, I have asked everyone around, and I have yet to meet anyone else that walks the walk - with their family, not just themselves.
I remember going to one of these big box retailers - I vaguely remember it to be The Wiz (sometime known as Nobody beats The Wiz) and buying a VCR or a DVD payer (I forget which). The salesman told me about the extended service plan. I told him that I don't need one. He said, 'Sir, it is simple. Please buy the extended service plan. It will cost you $45.00. But you have 3 days within which you can come back to the store and cancel it. Please do it for my sake'
I did buy the extended service plan and then canceled it a couple of days later.
One other time, when I was buying one of those ultra-cheap DVD players ($20 or so) from Circuit City (I think - it could have Best Buy too) and the sales guy tried to foist a $25 extended waranty on me). When I told him that it would be cheaper for me to buy 2 of the players, instead of his warranty, he didn't know where to look.
All in all, pretty sad the way they catch unwary customers.
I can attest to this. I have received a similar snail mail letter from First Union. I had opened an account many moons ago - when they were still called First Fidelity. I changed my bank for unrelated reasons and closed my account, my overdraft account, my business' account and my safe deposit account. All fine.
Suddenly they decided to charge me fees for the overdraft account - about 8 years after I had closed it.
I called them and they found that internally, they had just moved their data from an old system to a new system.
Initially I was absolutely petrified that someone had stolen my identity. Fortunately, the phone call proved that my concerns, although valid, were unnecessary.
The reason for the problem was that the integration of First Fidelity's accounts into the new system.
I would hazard that something similar may have happened - some bank acquired by BofA had data that got onto the new BofA system and triggered the alert.
This is exactly what I have tried and I find that the Vonage box is able to take whatever BW it needs. Of course, it also helps that I don't use BitTorrent these days:-)
And, in particular, TJX is a DISCOUNT retailer. They cut corners everywhere - and obviously IT planning and support and infrastructure etc. is looked upon as unnecessary overhead.
Surprised? No. It was something that was inevitable - just waiting to happen.
Here is what I have written to Senators Grassley and Durbin.
Dear Senator Durbin/Grassley,
It is with great pleasure that I read the news article about you and Senator Grassley/Durbin sending letters to the top 10 consumers of US H1-B visas.
I would like to point you to some of the ways in which these companies take away American jobs. How do I know this? Well, I used to work for a company such as these over 20 years ago. I used to work for Tata Unisys Limited which has now been subsumed by Tata Consultancy Services.
The modus operandi of these companies is as follows: 1) Hire cheap labor in India - preferably trained in computers. 2) Train them for a very short while (1-4 weeks) in something that is relevance at that time. 3) Place them in support roles in India working on some outsourced work. 4) As time goes by, the more senior members go the foreign countries from where the work has been outsourced and act as liaisons. 5) At the same time that this happens, the companies who are requesting this outsourcing usually start laying off people.
I should know. I have been on both sides of the divide. I have been one of those cheap laborers. I have also been affected directly by this outsourcing activity. I was laid off by Lehman Brothers, in 2002, as a direct consequence of this outsourcing.
To get some better indications on how this oursourcing trend is eating at the vitals of America, I would like to suggest the following ideas.
1) Ask each of these companies for the top 100 companies in the US whose work they are outsourcing - in dollar terms.. 2) Ask for specific terms of the contracts such as when the contract was signed, what was required of the Indian companies etc. 3) Ask each of the 100 US companies about the same contracts. 3) In addition, ask them how many people they have hired since the contract was signed. 4) Ask them how many employees have been laid off, or have left on their own since the contract was signed. 5) Of the employees that have been hired and that have left the US companies, find out how many are doing the work that the Indian companies are performing. 6) Ask for the salaries of the people that have been hired as well as the salaries of those that have left.
With the help of the above data, you should be able to construct the exact damage that is being wreaked on the US families and the economy in general by these practices.
Dear Senator, I hope you will take my request seriously and pursue the Indian and US companies participating in this fraud on the American people - all in the name of opening up the world economy.
To help the people that are not from the US, Radio Shack's tag line is 'You have questions? We have answers'. Hope that makes the parent post appear funnier.
When I first registered my home phone there was no restriction on which number I was registering - so I got my (and my wife's) cell phones also added.
This brings to my mind another thought - around the beginning of second quarter 2008, a whole lot of people are going to have their registrations expiring. These telemarketing companies are going to be jumping on those expirations and we will definitely see a whole slew of complaints of violations - which may be perfectly legal because of the expiration - of privacy by means of late night phone calls. This will be an interesting time to see what happens.
Will the registry send out an alert asking people to renew their registrations? Will people follow thru on a timely basis? Will the renewal be a simple 'Yes - please renew' button on the e-mail? Inquiring minds want to know...
I can only speak for myself. I do timeshift TV programmes. However most of them are PBS style programmes (NOVA, Nature, American Experience etc.)
And when it comes to viewing the saved programmes, I use by Dishnetwork DVR and wath it with my kids. Sometimes my wife joins in. The great thing about the timeshifting via DVR is that I get to pause the programme to insert interesting comments, or pause it to answer questions from my kids. All in all, a great time is had by all!
And the best thing is, I don't have to wait for the programme. I can watch it whenever all of us have spare time.
Interview with UTube owner and CEO
on
Utube Sues YouTube
·
· Score: 2, Informative
The following interview with Ralph Girkins, the owner of Universal Tubes, was broadcast on Marketplace - a segment in National Public Radio http://www.npr.org/. A transcript is available at http://marketplace.publicradio.org/shows/2006/10/1 3/PM200610134.html. Makes for interesting readin and definitely changes many of the assumptions that people are making regarding the kind of business he is trying to run. And you can definitely glean his frustration from his comments, at the lack of cooperation from Google/Youtube. So, why not go the American way? Sue sue sue!
.. but the signal to noise is way too high... I hate to be picky - but I am sure you meant s/n ratio was too low. If the s/n ratio was too high then you'd actually find the service useful:-)
Among the more interesting plans for the mission is a new type of camera to photograph the landing site just before touchdown...
I wonder what purpose this camera would serve? I mean, what is the point of photographing the landing site just before touchdown? What do we achieve? At best we will have a before and after image. Coupled with retro engines, that will probably be blowing up dust, the 'before' picture of the landing site is not even going to be 'pristine'!
And it is not as if the lander could take evasive action at the last minute if it spotted some Little Green Men!
Slashdot Mirror
Those with MOD points - how could you NOT raise this to a +5 Funny? I am dying - laughing!
From the first three paragraphs of the second TFA:
When Edward Snowden stole the crown jewels of the National Security Agency, he didn’t need to use any sophisticated devices or software or go around any computer firewall.
All he needed, said multiple intelligence community sources, was a few thumb drives and the willingness to exploit a gaping hole in an antiquated security system to rummage at will through the NSA’s servers and take 20,000 documents without leaving a trace.
“It’s 2013 and the NSA is stuck in 2003 technology,” said an intelligence official.
Doesn't look like he is portrayed as 'brilliant'. Just a bad quote taken from the article to 'made you look!'
I second this reference to http://www.winkflash.com./ I have used their service for many years and their quality is very, very good. I have experimented with Costco (used them for a long time), WalMart, CVS and Target. WinkFlash came out to be the least expensive - and they mail your stuff home. No need to trudge to the nearest location to pick up photos. Of course, the negative is that there is no instant gratification. The price at which they are most competitive is the 4 x 6.
As is normal with other online sites, you can save your pictures there etc. But the nice thing is that they have multiple sizes, canvases, books, calendars - all the additional features that online sites give you. I haven't tried most of the other formats.
Last but not least, their single click tweaking to make printed pictures seem better than what you see on screen, they have a setting called 'Enhancement' that tries to compensate for underexposed or overexposed pictures. It has worked for most of my pictures.
They have occasional sales - and no - I am not a salesman for WinkFlash - just a long-time customer.
This article also got Subramanian Swamy taken off the Harvard School professorship. No explanation offered. There was an online petition or two that got the support of many Harvard students and some of the staff. Harvard did not explain anything other than saying that the publication of the article.
My suspicion is that this has happened only because SS is not an American. Noam Chonsky of MIT has held similar firebrand views in the US - but his political views have not had him fired - because he is a Computer Science professor.
SS was a professor of Economics at Harvard - his article had nothing to do with Economics.
Censorship in the US anyone?
Indian Rediff
P.S. I suspect this will get me a Troll moderation - but please, read what I am saying a little dispassionately before rating me a troll. I am NOT supporting SS - but I DO support his right to free speech.
Salutations to your 4-digit UID :-)
I will answer your question by posting in my Journal. Apologies if this seems irreverent, but the phenomenon requires some writing. I hope you understand.
http://slashdot.org/journal/274686
IndianRediff
Mod parent up. The number of people that discount the short-term thinking of outsourcing cannot be overstated (parse that - hopefully I wrote it right).
I have looked time and again for over 10 years (having been laid off twice - once directly attributable to outsourcing and the second time to the current downswing) as to when this wave of outsourcng will change.
PHBs will look at the bottom line alone.
Let me give you an example. At a bank I worked at, we had a memo right from the top - for every local hire, there MUST be at least 7 overseas - otherwise the local hire is not allowed. I found the quality of work being done there sucked! Of the 800 odd people on various projects, there were more than 700 offshore - the rest were onshore - and I was privy to those rates. Offshore rates were 1/5 of the onshore equivalent. I remember one of the local bosses railing at one of the onshore representatives of the minions at the quality of code being delivered. It seems if a zero was entered into a field instead of a non-zero number, the web app would crash (or it was something equally stupid - please don't hold me to actual issue).
Given that these banks took such a large amount of money from US taxpayers, the least they should do is to ensure that any new jobs they have are given to onshore people. Instead, they have gone extreme - and are offshoring more than ever. Ingrates R Us.
Background: I am originally from India, one of the original outsourcers and have seen, with mine own eyes, the precipitous fall in quality of the offshore developers. Until about the mid- to late- 90s, things were not so bad. But Y2K changed all that. All and sundry became s/w developers. And the rest, as they say, is history.
Learning the news as I did this morning, I was in tears. I am not a fan of Apple (although I own an iPhone). But Steve Jobs has done in one lifetime, what many, many people put together could not do in many lifetimes. Any one of his achievements would qualify as genius. He has reinvented the term genius. Steve Jobs: May he rest in peace. My thoughts are with his family and with the Apple employees.
Indian Rediff
The old symbol for Rupee did not exist. You either said Re for Rupee (singular - but hardly used these days since the single Rupee is worth so little) or Rs for Rupees.
Side note: I remember in the old days on the IBM 1403 printers (running with the IBM 1401 machine) there was a symbol that used the space of one character and still printed Rs very close to each other. That was the closest that India ever came to having a symbol for the Rupee.
Until now.
The proposed symbol (which I believe looks very good) is symbolic of a few things:
1) The symbol looks like an R with the vertical leg removed and a horizontal line through it (much like the $ is simply an S with a vertical line | through it).
2) It is also the Hindi symbol for the first letter in the word Rupee in Hindi - with a line through it.
Hope this makes sense
Indian Rediff
It was 1987. I was in Texas, working for a bank (as a consultant, installing some mainframe software for them), when the VP dropped by and asked whether I would want to see something new. He had an old guy pounding away at a new fangled thing called a personal computer (for them). I was more than happy to indulge him.
Windows 2.0 was it! The key things that I remember doing are that the PC I used had no mouse. Since I was a mainframe type, everything was keyboard based in my prior life. I assumed that there must be special keystrokes that I needed to use to play with the new computer.
Over a period of a few days, I stumbled on the keyboard shortcuts and familiarised myself completely with all of them. The amazing thing is that most of them are still relevant today - and my kids bug me to show them how to switch between windows quickly! In fact, I am amazed at how few people know many of the short cuts and the various ways in which you can play with computer without using the mouse! But I digress.
Next week the VP dropped by again and asked whether I could install a game for him. I went ahead and installed the floppies (and they were real 5.25" floppies - not diskettes). And I started playing my first graphical game - Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards! Long story short - it was a fun few days while we indulged the old man (the Veep) and saw the various aspects of the game.
I remember wondering about the keyboard shortcuts and wishing they were not so complicated.
My next encounter with PCs was not until a couple of years later - Windows 3.1, a mouse and Quicken! And boy did I have a learning curve with the mouse! At first I thought the mouse was optional. It took me a good year or so to start using it without having to think about it.
Good times ... until the Linux revolution began.
Actually I have done something similar to this at my home. My kids (now aged 12 and 10) have been using Ubuntu for the past 3-4 years for their school projects. The older one (my daughter) is more resistant to technology in general. She doesn't like using computers :-)
My son has realised that I am never going to buy a Windows PC for him. Leave alone MS Office. The township here uses the Mac. Also, they have seen Windoze on my dual-boot laptop (on Ubuntu right now as I write this) and on my wife's laptop. I have been able to help them with their presentations (using Impress), their documents with Writer and it has been fairly painless.
I believe conditioning is all that is needed to get kids to realise that there is more than one way to do things. Getting them used to 3 operating systems at this young age and getting to see that it is nothing different has been uplifting. They have learned to live with this - and even enjoy the wider variety of games available for Ubuntu.
I also know that I am probably the only parent that does this with his kids. As a matter of fact, I have asked everyone around, and I have yet to meet anyone else that walks the walk - with their family, not just themselves.
Indian Rediff
Mod parent up!
This is certainly something to think about. I wish I had mod points today!
I remember going to one of these big box retailers - I vaguely remember it to be The Wiz (sometime known as Nobody beats The Wiz) and buying a VCR or a DVD payer (I forget which). The salesman told me about the extended service plan. I told him that I don't need one. He said, 'Sir, it is simple. Please buy the extended service plan. It will cost you $45.00. But you have 3 days within which you can come back to the store and cancel it. Please do it for my sake'
I did buy the extended service plan and then canceled it a couple of days later.
One other time, when I was buying one of those ultra-cheap DVD players ($20 or so) from Circuit City (I think - it could have Best Buy too) and the sales guy tried to foist a $25 extended waranty on me). When I told him that it would be cheaper for me to buy 2 of the players, instead of his warranty, he didn't know where to look.
All in all, pretty sad the way they catch unwary customers.
I can attest to this. I have received a similar snail mail letter from First Union. I had opened an account many moons ago - when they were still called First Fidelity. I changed my bank for unrelated reasons and closed my account, my overdraft account, my business' account and my safe deposit account. All fine.
Suddenly they decided to charge me fees for the overdraft account - about 8 years after I had closed it.
I called them and they found that internally, they had just moved their data from an old system to a new system.
Initially I was absolutely petrified that someone had stolen my identity. Fortunately, the phone call proved that my concerns, although valid, were unnecessary.
The reason for the problem was that the integration of First Fidelity's accounts into the new system.
I would hazard that something similar may have happened - some bank acquired by BofA had data that got onto the new BofA system and triggered the alert.
Isn't it possible that the only reason they have these 'low' prices is because they are ripping off customers by bidding against them?
So you save with one hand, and pay for it with the other.
Dubious savings.
This is exactly what I have tried and I find that the Vonage box is able to take whatever BW it needs. Of course, it also helps that I don't use BitTorrent these days :-)
A parsec is a measure of distance http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parsec/ - not a measure of time.
And, in particular, TJX is a DISCOUNT retailer. They cut corners everywhere - and obviously IT planning and support and infrastructure etc. is looked upon as unnecessary overhead.
Surprised? No. It was something that was inevitable - just waiting to happen.
Here is what I have written to Senators Grassley and Durbin.
Dear Senator Durbin/Grassley,
It is with great pleasure that I read the news article about you and Senator Grassley/Durbin sending letters to the top 10 consumers of US H1-B visas.
I would like to point you to some of the ways in which these companies take away American jobs. How do I know this? Well, I used to work for a company such as these over 20 years ago. I used to work for Tata Unisys Limited which has now been subsumed by Tata Consultancy Services.
The modus operandi of these companies is as follows:
1) Hire cheap labor in India - preferably trained in computers.
2) Train them for a very short while (1-4 weeks) in something that is relevance at that time.
3) Place them in support roles in India working on some outsourced work.
4) As time goes by, the more senior members go the foreign countries from where the work has been outsourced and act as liaisons.
5) At the same time that this happens, the companies who are requesting this outsourcing usually start laying off people.
I should know. I have been on both sides of the divide. I have been one of those cheap laborers. I have also been affected directly by this outsourcing activity. I was laid off by Lehman Brothers, in 2002, as a direct consequence of this outsourcing.
To get some better indications on how this oursourcing trend is eating at the vitals of America, I would like to suggest the following ideas.
1) Ask each of these companies for the top 100 companies in the US whose work they are outsourcing - in dollar terms..
2) Ask for specific terms of the contracts such as when the contract was signed, what was required of the Indian companies etc.
3) Ask each of the 100 US companies about the same contracts.
3) In addition, ask them how many people they have hired since the contract was signed.
4) Ask them how many employees have been laid off, or have left on their own since the contract was signed.
5) Of the employees that have been hired and that have left the US companies, find out how many are doing the work that the Indian companies are performing.
6) Ask for the salaries of the people that have been hired as well as the salaries of those that have left.
With the help of the above data, you should be able to construct the exact damage that is being wreaked on the US families and the economy in general by these practices.
Dear Senator, I hope you will take my request seriously and pursue the Indian and US companies participating in this fraud on the American people - all in the name of opening up the world economy.
Sincerely,
To help the people that are not from the US, Radio Shack's tag line is 'You have questions? We have answers'. Hope that makes the parent post appear funnier.
When I first registered my home phone there was no restriction on which number I was registering - so I got my (and my wife's) cell phones also added.
...
This brings to my mind another thought - around the beginning of second quarter 2008, a whole lot of people are going to have their registrations expiring. These telemarketing companies are going to be jumping on those expirations and we will definitely see a whole slew of complaints of violations - which may be perfectly legal because of the expiration - of privacy by means of late night phone calls. This will be an interesting time to see what happens.
Will the registry send out an alert asking people to renew their registrations? Will people follow thru on a timely basis? Will the renewal be a simple 'Yes - please renew' button on the e-mail? Inquiring minds want to know
I can only speak for myself. I do timeshift TV programmes. However most of them are PBS style programmes (NOVA, Nature, American Experience etc.) And when it comes to viewing the saved programmes, I use by Dishnetwork DVR and wath it with my kids. Sometimes my wife joins in. The great thing about the timeshifting via DVR is that I get to pause the programme to insert interesting comments, or pause it to answer questions from my kids. All in all, a great time is had by all! And the best thing is, I don't have to wait for the programme. I can watch it whenever all of us have spare time.
The following interview with Ralph Girkins, the owner of Universal Tubes, was broadcast on Marketplace - a segment in National Public Radio http://www.npr.org/. A transcript is available at http://marketplace.publicradio.org/shows/2006/10/1 3/PM200610134.html. Makes for interesting readin and definitely changes many of the assumptions that people are making regarding the kind of business he is trying to run. And you can definitely glean his frustration from his comments, at the lack of cooperation from Google/Youtube. So, why not go the American way? Sue sue sue!
.. but the signal to noise is way too high... :-)
I hate to be picky - but I am sure you meant s/n ratio was too low. If the s/n ratio was too high then you'd actually find the service useful
I wonder what purpose this camera would serve? I mean, what is the point of photographing the landing site just before touchdown? What do we achieve? At best we will have a before and after image. Coupled with retro engines, that will probably be blowing up dust, the 'before' picture of the landing site is not even going to be 'pristine'!
And it is not as if the lander could take evasive action at the last minute if it spotted some Little Green Men!
While we're at it, :-)
ALU = Arithmetic and Logic Unit, Alu = potato (in Hindi - land from where Apu of Kwik-E-Mart fame comes)