"I would use a pair of laptops but we want to keep using the Osprey capture cards that we've invested in"
I think before you change your hardware you're going to need to change your mindset. The Osprey cards are fantastic (ESPECIALLY their XLR input capability) but anything requiring such a large PCI card wil almost mandate a deep-chassis 2u form factor. I recently broadcast a friend's wedding and had the same problem - it's difficult to get good audio/video with standard laptop hardware. I settled on a good DV camera with an add-on quality microphone connected to a USB ATI TV-Wonder and was VERY happy with the results. At only a few hundred K/second (church broadband), the encoding was the clear bottleneck in the A/V quality. On top of that, I was taping using the DV cam the whole time so I had a very high quality copy of the action for later post-processing and packaging for the bride and groom.
For the professional? A good DV cam (maybe PTZ, audio inputs required though) ouputting raw DV to two sources - a high-capacity DV recorder and a beefy laptop acting as the encoder. The recorder is there to prevent the encoder from seeing the akward minute-long outages you encounter when switching tapes (I ran into this problem last month).
Captain Copyright has heroically announced he's suing/. for copyright violation, after the vicious plagiarizers failed to read his site's asinine legal disclaimer and reproduced his valuable intellectual property. Additionally, poster jgaynor will also be sued for talking shit about captain copyright AND linking to his site in the same paragraph. Think that last sentance was hyperbole? Think again:
"permission to link is explicitly withheld from any website the contents of which may, in the opinion of the Access Copyright, be damaging or cause harm to the reputation of Access Copyright."
Holy Nutsack Cap'n Copyright!
More making fun of this ridiculous attempt at a valid legal statement here (disclaimer: not affiliated).
"Some of the largest hardware makers in the world, including 3M, Cisco, Corning and Qualcomm, sent a letter to Congress on Wednesday firmly opposing new laws mandating Net neutrality--the concept that broadband providers must never favor some Web sites or Internet services over others."
Here's how I read this:
"Manufacturers of multi-layer traffic-shaping hardware sent a letter endorsing a business model that would require heavy deployments of multi-layer traffic-shaping hardware"
Around lunchtime, just as I was on a Defending Our Oceans project leaders conference call, and being cautiously optimistic about how well things are going out here so far - disaster struck the underwater video and stills research camera, affectionately known as the 'Drop-Cam'. While surveying a coral ridge it had crashed into a rocky outcrop and been broken into pieces.
Incoming GOP crap-spewing about how the sketch was inappropriate and Colbert is a no-talent hack. I'm not a fan of Bush but I really felt for him up there - Colbert was brutal. Funny nonetheless.
Do you think the desire to program computers has declined in the younger generations? If so, what reasons might you cite as the cause?
When I was in elementary school we had this GREAT program called 'LAMP' (logic, art, mathematics, programming) where they took the smart kids out of class every once and a while and had us do extracurriculars in the above-mentioned subjects. The 'programming' aspect consisted of nothing but logo and some linear BASIC on TRS80s, but it at least got me interested in futzing with my Commodore 64 to the point where I could make rudimentary text programs and dream of mastering the 'poke' command.
Without an easy-to-learn language like BASIC where do you begin to teach the fundamentals of programming? The syntax, class structure, includes, etc of modern object-oriented programming languages are a huge barrier to picking up the basics. Would you start a third or fourth grader out on Java? C++? I certainly wouldn't be able to handle that - I had a difficult enough time making my LOGO turtle move around. Perhaps the best solution would be some sort of drag-and-drop IDE, like visual basic for 6 year olds, where children could understand the concepts of programming without being overwhelmed by the syntax all at once. Anyone know of one? I seem to remember something similar using java beans demoed by Sun while I was in college . . .
You're thinking of HSTR - and no, no one really uses it anymore. In looking around I was amazed to see that the working group even thought far enough ahead to start planning a gigabit spec. I havent seen a concentrator/MAU (right word?) in years, though. Any QoS features that were implemented in Token Ring are pretty much duplicated in 802.1p and other (proprietary) layer 2 QoS/CoS protocols.
Rings themselves are still used, just in other topologies. You may still see some FDDI here and there, and many cable companies use RPR/DTP/SRP to deliver digital cable and broadband access at the same time in their cores.
Either way, I'm sure the pointy haired boss doesn't miss it.
1. Consolidate Authority - 2. Install a frontend
on
Organizing Your DNS?
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
It seems to me that most of your problems can be solved with a little politcal weight-throwing.
This network is considerably larger, with more name servers. The control of IPs, hostnames and DNS entries is somewhat loose, and it is starting take its toll.
The number of nameservers is irrelevant as long as they're master/slave. Are each of these NS boxen run by a different business unit/department? If so, find the group with the organizational proponency for DNS (probably you) and demand that they be given full control. Assign a hostmaster for your organization and funnel ANY and ALL dns changes through him/her/it. Authority for subdomains can still be given out, but force a signed waiver to cover your ass when they shoot themselves in the foor by running 2k3 AD as a production NS service.
Once this is done you'll probably want to ditch the flat-file approach and run some sort of frontend. It guarantees that when your hostmaster eventually quits you wont have to find another expensive geek. I used to run the webmin plugin for BIND, but stopped once I saw what a security nightmare webmin was. Don't have much experience with anything else besides custom solutions but nictool and oDNS have their supporters.
How DARE you attack the beacon of truth, the wellspring of knowledge that is Anne Coulter.
From a CBC interview between the great Ms. Coulter and Bob McKeown: Coulter: "Canada used to be one of our most loyal friends and vice-versa. I mean Canada sent troops to Vietnam - was Vietnam less containable and more of a threat than Saddam Hussein?" McKeown interrupts: "Canada didn't send troops to Vietnam." Coulter: "I don't think that's right." McKeown: "Canada did not send troops to Vietnam." Coulter (looking desperate): "Indochina?" McKeown: "Uh no. Canada...second World War of course. Korea. Yes. Vietnam No." Coulter: "I think you're wrong." McKeown: "No, took a pass on Vietnam." Coulter: "I think you're wrong." McKeown: "No, Australia was there, not Canada." Coulter: "I think Canada sent troops." McKeown: "No." Coulter: "Well. I'll get back to you on that."
McKeown tags out in script: "Coulter never got back to us -- but for the record, like Iraq, Canada sent no troops to Vietnam."
Bad name, Great product, win32 port available
on
Ekiga 2.0 Released
·
· Score: 4, Informative
To echo the 15 comments above this, yes the name needs some work. While we're at it the logo sucks too - but that does not change the fact that this is a fantastic product. I've been using it for a few months now on in a 'videoconferencing only' role on my winboxen and I REALLY like it.
Pros - relatively stable: only has problems when I try to redial before a previous session has properly terminated - interoperability: I've tested with Sony, Polycom & Tandberg H.323 codecs - flawless. SIP native means it will continue to work with equipment from these vendors. - Higher speed, more options than netmeeting or openphone (static images, video files, etc) - It's f**king free (Polycom PVX, Tandberg suite cost assloads and require support fees)
Cons - relatively stable: see above, could be improved - adding codecs screws shit up - it comes with H.261 default. I've had mixed success trying to add 3rd party codecs (h.263, h.264)
Microsoft gave up supporting netmeeting years go (and with it, open standard conferencing). They are now dumping all of their money into conferenceXP - a laggy, buggy and mem-leaky alternative which excludes anyone other than XP or win2k3 users. Win32 Ekiga is a godsend to anyone who has to support hardware video codecs in a windows environment.
This xmas I was looking for a nice looking, sub-$500 watch and picked up the Citizen Calibre 2100. While searching for watches I stumbled across the ridiculously rich timepiece enthusiasts at thepurists.com. Don't bother looking for a watch you can buy there as most of the pieces they review are >$10000, but those same reviews are fascinating to read. I warn you though, after you see a flying tourbillon in action you will be unhappy with whatever you end up getting.
They failed due to base erosion caused by overtopping and/or poor 'transition points' where embankments went from natural earthen mounds to man-made concrete slabs. Has there been something more authoritative (that included cracking) since the ASCE's report?
what cheap or free monitoring options are there available . ..
If the network is the issue, the cheapest and simplest is a good laptop running Ethereal or Snort. Also pick up (or scrounge up) a dumb hub and if possible a fiber tap, since you're probably running in a mixed-media switched infrastructure (or maybe you're not - hence the problems:) ). If you want to get fancy you can buy span or rspan capable switches which will let you mirror traffic from individual ports or Vlans to a single management station port (in which case you can just use a desktop).
This should go withot saying, but those packet captures will be useless unless you know WHERE each mac address is on the network. That said:
1) maintain reliable L1/L2/L3 mappings 2) Tag both ends of long cables and make sure all wallports are numbered, and 3) beat the shit out of anyone who brings personal equipment in and plugs it in. It screws up your records and is probably less secure.
This is a fine idea, and one that could be done at little cost save for the 'global honeypot network' part. Why not use info from an existing distributed log source like Dshield?
While Im unsure if Gallery allows you to create, edit and query 'meta' fields with each image I do know that it reads, stores and can query the EXIF fields of all imported images. One way to be able to store (once)/query (many) your custom data fields would be to initially fudge those values into the EXIF fields of each scanned image. Yes it would be weird to search for 'last name' with a 'camera model' query, but it would work.
Anyway this is probably how you'd want to go about this:
1. Scan doc to file 2. use an app or library to OCR the fields you want 3. Add EXIF fields/data to the image with perl (CPAN EXIF modules) 4. dump image into gallery. Gallery parses out and stores your crap in query-able EXIF fields.
This is all conjecture though - good luck. Seems like a pretty shitty task if you ask me.
You see this is all some sort of geek payola conspiracy. These pictures will be used by these guys to create the next 'must have' giant microbe that will be sold here on thinkgeek, which is owned by the same mega-hyper-nerd-congomerate that runs slashdot, which just gave them free advertising via this story . . . I too have unwittingly become a pawn in this whole twisted affair by noticing the connection (years of OSDN/OSTG brainwashing) and posting this.
What a fantastic idea - Acrobat running constantly on EVERY desktop. You put in the purchase order for n units of extra desktop memory while I get adobe on the phone to see what they're offering for souls these days . . .
Mod me down for slander, but I don't understand why we keep linking to Hexus reviews. Their content quality is high but their servers can't take a slashdotting for more than 3-4 minutes. 0 comments and it's taken over a minute to load as it is:(.
Slashdot Mirror
"I would use a pair of laptops but we want to keep using the Osprey capture cards that we've invested in"
I think before you change your hardware you're going to need to change your mindset. The Osprey cards are fantastic (ESPECIALLY their XLR input capability) but anything requiring such a large PCI card wil almost mandate a deep-chassis 2u form factor. I recently broadcast a friend's wedding and had the same problem - it's difficult to get good audio/video with standard laptop hardware. I settled on a good DV camera with an add-on quality microphone connected to a USB ATI TV-Wonder and was VERY happy with the results. At only a few hundred K/second (church broadband), the encoding was the clear bottleneck in the A/V quality. On top of that, I was taping using the DV cam the whole time so I had a very high quality copy of the action for later post-processing and packaging for the bride and groom.
For the professional? A good DV cam (maybe PTZ, audio inputs required though) ouputting raw DV to two sources - a high-capacity DV recorder and a beefy laptop acting as the encoder. The recorder is there to prevent the encoder from seeing the akward minute-long outages you encounter when switching tapes (I ran into this problem last month).
Captain Copyright has heroically announced he's suing /. for copyright violation, after the vicious plagiarizers failed to read his site's asinine legal disclaimer and reproduced his valuable intellectual property. Additionally, poster jgaynor will also be sued for talking shit about captain copyright AND linking to his site in the same paragraph. Think that last sentance was hyperbole? Think again:
"permission to link is explicitly withheld from any website the contents of which may, in the opinion of the Access Copyright, be damaging or cause harm to the reputation of Access Copyright."
Holy Nutsack Cap'n Copyright!
More making fun of this ridiculous attempt at a valid legal statement here (disclaimer: not affiliated).
Original Article:
"Some of the largest hardware makers in the world, including 3M, Cisco, Corning and Qualcomm, sent a letter to Congress on Wednesday firmly opposing new laws mandating Net neutrality--the concept that broadband providers must never favor some Web sites or Internet services over others."
Here's how I read this:
"Manufacturers of multi-layer traffic-shaping hardware sent a letter endorsing a business model that would require heavy deployments of multi-layer traffic-shaping hardware"
It can further be broken down:
"Money Good. No make law make us lose money."
Ironically, they broke it yesterday by unexpectedly banging it against some coral.
Around lunchtime, just as I was on a Defending Our Oceans project leaders conference call, and being cautiously optimistic about how well things are going out here so far - disaster struck the underwater video and stills research camera, affectionately known as the 'Drop-Cam'. While surveying a coral ridge it had crashed into a rocky outcrop and been broken into pieces.
Incoming GOP crap-spewing about how the sketch was inappropriate and Colbert is a no-talent hack. I'm not a fan of Bush but I really felt for him up there - Colbert was brutal. Funny nonetheless.
Torrent of the whole thing is here: http://www.mininova.org/tor/296239
Do you think the desire to program computers has declined in the younger generations? If so, what reasons might you cite as the cause?
When I was in elementary school we had this GREAT program called 'LAMP' (logic, art, mathematics, programming) where they took the smart kids out of class every once and a while and had us do extracurriculars in the above-mentioned subjects. The 'programming' aspect consisted of nothing but logo and some linear BASIC on TRS80s, but it at least got me interested in futzing with my Commodore 64 to the point where I could make rudimentary text programs and dream of mastering the 'poke' command.
Without an easy-to-learn language like BASIC where do you begin to teach the fundamentals of programming? The syntax, class structure, includes, etc of modern object-oriented programming languages are a huge barrier to picking up the basics. Would you start a third or fourth grader out on Java? C++? I certainly wouldn't be able to handle that - I had a difficult enough time making my LOGO turtle move around. Perhaps the best solution would be some sort of drag-and-drop IDE, like visual basic for 6 year olds, where children could understand the concepts of programming without being overwhelmed by the syntax all at once. Anyone know of one? I seem to remember something similar using java beans demoed by Sun while I was in college . . .
You're thinking of HSTR - and no, no one really uses it anymore. In looking around I was amazed to see that the working group even thought far enough ahead to start planning a gigabit spec. I havent seen a concentrator/MAU (right word?) in years, though. Any QoS features that were implemented in Token Ring are pretty much duplicated in 802.1p and other (proprietary) layer 2 QoS/CoS protocols.
Rings themselves are still used, just in other topologies. You may still see some FDDI here and there, and many cable companies use RPR/DTP/SRP to deliver digital cable and broadband access at the same time in their cores.
Either way, I'm sure the pointy haired boss doesn't miss it.
It seems to me that most of your problems can be solved with a little politcal weight-throwing.
This network is considerably larger, with more name servers. The control of IPs, hostnames and DNS entries is somewhat loose, and it is starting take its toll.
The number of nameservers is irrelevant as long as they're master/slave. Are each of these NS boxen run by a different business unit/department? If so, find the group with the organizational proponency for DNS (probably you) and demand that they be given full control. Assign a hostmaster for your organization and funnel ANY and ALL dns changes through him/her/it. Authority for subdomains can still be given out, but force a signed waiver to cover your ass when they shoot themselves in the foor by running 2k3 AD as a production NS service.
Once this is done you'll probably want to ditch the flat-file approach and run some sort of frontend. It guarantees that when your hostmaster eventually quits you wont have to find another expensive geek. I used to run the webmin plugin for BIND, but stopped once I saw what a security nightmare webmin was. Don't have much experience with anything else besides custom solutions but nictool and oDNS have their supporters.
How DARE you attack the beacon of truth, the wellspring of knowledge that is Anne Coulter.
...second World War of course. Korea. Yes. Vietnam No."
From a CBC interview between the great Ms. Coulter and Bob McKeown:
Coulter: "Canada used to be one of our most loyal friends and vice-versa. I mean Canada sent troops to Vietnam - was Vietnam less containable and more of a threat than Saddam Hussein?"
McKeown interrupts: "Canada didn't send troops to Vietnam."
Coulter: "I don't think that's right."
McKeown: "Canada did not send troops to Vietnam."
Coulter (looking desperate): "Indochina?"
McKeown: "Uh no. Canada
Coulter: "I think you're wrong."
McKeown: "No, took a pass on Vietnam."
Coulter: "I think you're wrong."
McKeown: "No, Australia was there, not Canada."
Coulter: "I think Canada sent troops."
McKeown: "No."
Coulter: "Well. I'll get back to you on that."
McKeown tags out in script:
"Coulter never got back to us -- but for the record, like Iraq, Canada sent no troops to Vietnam."
Hilarious video here.
To echo the 15 comments above this, yes the name needs some work. While we're at it the logo sucks too - but that does not change the fact that this is a fantastic product. I've been using it for a few months now on in a 'videoconferencing only' role on my winboxen and I REALLY like it.
Pros
- relatively stable: only has problems when I try to redial before a previous session has properly terminated
- interoperability: I've tested with Sony, Polycom & Tandberg H.323 codecs - flawless. SIP native means it will continue to work with equipment from these vendors.
- Higher speed, more options than netmeeting or openphone (static images, video files, etc)
- It's f**king free (Polycom PVX, Tandberg suite cost assloads and require support fees)
Cons
- relatively stable: see above, could be improved
- adding codecs screws shit up - it comes with H.261 default. I've had mixed success trying to add 3rd party codecs (h.263, h.264)
Microsoft gave up supporting netmeeting years go (and with it, open standard conferencing). They are now dumping all of their money into conferenceXP - a laggy, buggy and mem-leaky alternative which excludes anyone other than XP or win2k3 users. Win32 Ekiga is a godsend to anyone who has to support hardware video codecs in a windows environment.
Here's the slow link to the port info: http://snapshots.gnomemeeting.net/win32/
A little off topic, but still related.
This xmas I was looking for a nice looking, sub-$500 watch and picked up the Citizen Calibre 2100. While searching for watches I stumbled across the ridiculously rich timepiece enthusiasts at thepurists.com. Don't bother looking for a watch you can buy there as most of the pieces they review are >$10000, but those same reviews are fascinating to read. I warn you though, after you see a flying tourbillon in action you will be unhappy with whatever you end up getting.
I don't want to further the agenda of the people responsible for placing this asshat in office, but
AAAAAAAAAAAMEN.
They failed due to base erosion caused by overtopping and/or poor 'transition points' where embankments went from natural earthen mounds to man-made concrete slabs. Has there been something more authoritative (that included cracking) since the ASCE's report?
what cheap or free monitoring options are there available . . .
:) ). If you want to get fancy you can buy span or rspan capable switches which will let you mirror traffic from individual ports or Vlans to a single management station port (in which case you can just use a desktop).
If the network is the issue, the cheapest and simplest is a good laptop running Ethereal or Snort. Also pick up (or scrounge up) a dumb hub and if possible a fiber tap, since you're probably running in a mixed-media switched infrastructure (or maybe you're not - hence the problems
This should go withot saying, but those packet captures will be useless unless you know WHERE each mac address is on the network. That said:
1) maintain reliable L1/L2/L3 mappings
2) Tag both ends of long cables and make sure all wallports are numbered, and
3) beat the shit out of anyone who brings personal equipment in and plugs it in. It screws up your records and is probably less secure.
This is a fine idea, and one that could be done at little cost save for the 'global honeypot network' part. Why not use info from an existing distributed log source like Dshield?
While Im unsure if Gallery allows you to create, edit and query 'meta' fields with each image I do know that it reads, stores and can query the EXIF fields of all imported images. One way to be able to store (once)/query (many) your custom data fields would be to initially fudge those values into the EXIF fields of each scanned image. Yes it would be weird to search for 'last name' with a 'camera model' query, but it would work.
Anyway this is probably how you'd want to go about this:
1. Scan doc to file
2. use an app or library to OCR the fields you want
3. Add EXIF fields/data to the image with perl (CPAN EXIF modules)
4. dump image into gallery. Gallery parses out and stores your crap in query-able EXIF fields.
This is all conjecture though - good luck. Seems like a pretty shitty task if you ask me.
You see this is all some sort of geek payola conspiracy. These pictures will be used by these guys to create the next 'must have' giant microbe that will be sold here on thinkgeek, which is owned by the same mega-hyper-nerd-congomerate that runs slashdot, which just gave them free advertising via this story . . . I too have unwittingly become a pawn in this whole twisted affair by noticing the connection (years of OSDN/OSTG brainwashing) and posting this.
Ehh - I just did a reinstall overtop (as opposed to the automated upgrade) and it fixed the issue for me.
Worked on all of my home machines well - choked to death on my work machine. Here's a nice screen:
http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~jgaynor/images/ff.bmp
Google shows others (if only a few) have had this issue with older moz builds.
Bring on the 93.1322575 gigabit/second ethernet!
Step 1: Buy computer parts.
Step 2: Assemble computer.
I have three of these things (silent, flashboot, netboot - the whole bit). Can I get a frontpage article for assembling commodity parts as well?
I take it back - the i-RAM is DDR only :(. Still useful for those with extra memory though.
Try Gigabyte's i-RAM:
Anandtech Review
4 slot, PCI, makes a great swap file drive for pshop or premiere.
What a fantastic idea - Acrobat running constantly on EVERY desktop. You put in the purchase order for n units of extra desktop memory while I get adobe on the phone to see what they're offering for souls these days . . .
Mod me down for slander, but I don't understand why we keep linking to Hexus reviews. Their content quality is high but their servers can't take a slashdotting for more than 3-4 minutes. 0 comments and it's taken over a minute to load as it is :(.