Because of the interference from national governments, there will always be a handful of companies per sector, and wall street does not favor the Chabeol http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaebol concept, and we will have one oligopoly per sector.
But, due to the advances of technology, slowly the incumbents will be displaced, and new firms will take teir place. Therefore, wall street will be happy when there is an oligopoly per area.
Lucent Droped their GSM product line a long time ago. And alcatel has no CDMA2000 1xrtt or EV-DO products. Therefore, the two wireless division are not doing EXACTLY the same thing...
With the rest of the product line, where the products overlap, they will do the usual:
Decide on a surviving product (based on market share, technology, costs, future potential and other reasons), decide on a product map which highlights the life of the disapearing products and migration paths, and finaly, brace for impact.
[begins serious part of post]...in Venezuela, we do not use that much cooper. The water pipes are made of galvanized Iron, for instance. And no bronze leafs in the curches or old houses.
As per the cooper recycling, some people, due to the poverty, steal the ground wire of the 3phase electrical distribution to recycle it (and yes, they screw the Electricity supply for the rest of us).
BTW, PVC is not advisable, vecause, when it burns, it releases toxic fumes......
As per de coins, ours used to have a huge content of nickel, and people began melting them for the nickel in 1988.
[end seroious part of post] [begins the funny part]
So, if you wasteful americans want some consulting on the subject;-)
... that when the WINE Coders were coding the Metafile APIs, they:
1.) Did not realize this was a design flaw (most likely).
or 2.) Realized this was a security flaw and have been explioting it since years ago (highly unlikely).
or 3.) Have been urging Microsoft to change the code since they realized (highly unlikely, as well).
The point I am trying to make is that this design flaw was not spotted by the many eyes of the WINE project, showing that even the OSS development model is subject to mistakes.
The intent of this comment is not to say which development model is better, just to point out the fact that ALL development models are subjet to failures, and that our analysis should not be so unidimensional and binary, a thought that seems to be quite lost in this particular thread.
As an aside, if this atack was made public in 12/27/05, and confirmed by Microsoft in 12/28/05, shoudnt have the WINE comunity tested for the flaw, posted a preliminary patch ASAP and then post a definitive patch that mimics the efect off the Microsoft patch? Why to produce the patch just AFTER Microsoft posted theirs, late by the comon wisdom of/.?
My other question our regard a Turing-Complete "Image File Format", Postscript. Given the complexity in Postcript, is it not possible (but most likely harder, since it can not touch Filesystems) to do exploits in it?
The answer to that is that they try to minimize support and certification costs bot for them and their partners. Imagine If you had to certify Oracle For longhorn running on PII, PIII, P4, various Athlons, Xeons, IA64, X8664, PPC, RISC, etc.
Hey, even RedHat and Suse will limit the Microprocesors they support. The fact that Linux "can" be compiled to a multitude of platforms does not mean that it is commercialy viable to do so.
Possibly, there is a version of LongHorn that runs on a PowerPC G5 somewhere, but since you see it only if microsoft releases it, we will never see it....
Microsoft Released Word, Excel, Powerpoint and Visio viewers. meanwhile lotus released a viewer for Freelance Graphics.
Now, on a more serious note, This is cool, the "Player" is far more complicated than any viewer/player out there, and the uses for the thing are intriguing. From the Web Page of VMware, collages can work on a support case and all share the same one in a VM, or you can demo apps in the confort of the VM. The page even points to VMs made available by IBM, oracle and others. Of course, question is, What is the Status of the SW that you run in the VMs, including the OS itself? In the case of FOSS, we know the answer, but in other cases, just watc out guys.
So Intel sends most of the competition in the high end packing. But the guys making PA-RISCs MIPSs and ALPHAs transfer the R&D costs (Sun has not produced a viable spac in years, The latest chips come from Fujitsu, and the Niagara design comes from a startup they bought, check IEEE Spectrum) and Fab costs (how much does a state of the art 90nm fab costs nowadays? 1.5Billion perhaps?) to Intel... From a financial point of wiew, Win-Win situation.
The only thing is that since now those companies do not have ISA lock-in on the customers (and if the customer is runing Linux on top of Itanium the also do not have OS lock-in) some less efficient companies (less eficient technically, or in marketing, or in sales, or in a combination) will fall to the sidelines... Oh, the humanity! Please, someone tell me how taht is a bad thing!
Of course, some people say Itanium is a pile of dong... I do not know (and do not think so, and if it is, intel can solve it with a huge bag of bills ["a realazo limpio"]). Others say that X86-64 is the cure-all-silver-bullet-miracle-medicine. I do not know (and do not think so, all that cruft, you know?).
The point is that for it's intended use (high end servers), and for the time being, Itanium is OK.
Before it was Slashdoted, and it seems like a Short and long term win win Situation:
IBM Wins, short term: Good karma, and reducing (somewhat) their headcount.
Employee wins: A new career, pursued while still having IBM benefits (like health plan) and partial salary, because they will be in a leave of absence.
IBM wins, long term: Continuin g supply of skilled workforce
Society wins: Teachers.
This is a sort of thing that companies have been doing for a lon time, but this is a very innovative way for them to do it... kudos to IBM.
In Venezuela we dub this "La cajita feliz" (the happy meal, a reference to McDonalds kids lunch). When you offer incentives to the employees to leave on their own will, therefore reducing headcount without layoffs.
Our PTT, CANTV, did this. In HP now, to reach their staffing targets, they anounced a change of the early retirement policy, and many employees arte taking advantage before the deadline, so, in the end, they will reduce the workforce by some number X of employees, but they will have laid off a number less than x, the others leaving on their own volition....
Also EAS was the result of a contest made by the _fine_folks_at_NIST_ (I owe a huge debt of gratitude to nist for their fine Open Source ATM network Simulator that I used in my thesis http://w3.antd.nist.gov/Hsntg/prd_atm-sim.html/).
The code that won was developed by a Belgian team, and therefore, not bounded by the restrictions, even if those restrictions were still enforced....
Yes, Intel has more offerings and better roadmap, and volume discounts, and programmers, and prestige....
But this particular analysis is not mentioning the fact that Intel can give you a system, head to toe. That will allow Apple to move the R&D cost of mobo desing to something else, like SW engineering, or industrial design.... go figure...
Now, if I put on my aluminum-foil-thinking-cap, I can think of the following arrangement:
Intel debuts a new and improved processor/chipset combo, and gives it to Apple with, let's say, six months advantage over everyone else, as beta testers.... If there are no bugs in the combo, all is nice and dandy. If there are bugs in the combo, Intel correts them in the silicon, for all the PC bunch to use, and Apple, having more control over the platform than anyone else in the indutry, corrects the errors via a BIOS/OS patch, intead of a more costly recall.... Match made in heaven! Apple gets a six months edge, Intel gets a HUGE and cheap field trial of new silicon!
Just my two cents anyway....
In the end, there was not just ONE magic reason, but a host little thing that made Apple choose Intel over AMD, Transmeta, VIA/Cenatur and all the others out there...
Indulge on the best MOBILE processor known to mankind as of this writing (IMHO AMD-Turion, the only MOBILE processor that supports X-86 64). Add RAM as there is no tomorrow (That is, up to the maximum your laptop supports), and make sure that your laptop's chipset supports dual monitor. Get the Wide monitor breed of laptop, as that way you will be able to see all lines with no line breaks.
Buy a flat pannel monitor as your second monitor, a GOOD keyboard http://www.pckeyboard.com/ and a GREAT mouse.
Put your laptop in a stand, so that the LCD is at a convenient eye level, Plug the keyboard, mouse, and second monitor... presto, that is your platform. Get VMware, and your favourite IDE and OS(no comments here)...
The beauty of this setup is that it is a kick-ass platform, and you can take (most of) it with you, if needed.
Try to set all this up in a place with a window with some sunlight and a nice view. Work for like 45~90 minutes, stopping every now and the to enjoy the view for 1 minute. After that get up and for 10~20 min, stretch your legs, get some water, go to the bathroom, eat a snack, chat a little, et cetera. Lather, rinse, repeat.
I should know, as I am describing the corporate setting in which I spent my time from Jul 2001 til March 2004, with a very similar setup, and it worked great. And no, it was not a cube, but an office, with a real door, overlooking the Avila mountain. Left as a consultant, and now I am about to begin my MBA. I'll get back to you to tell you how my setting is after I finish my studies. With any luck I'll be able to replicate that setting, but in a corner office;-). Hope to be able to get that for my employees as well....
This is one case where reading the article will not help. The article says that before they had propiertary Unix (do not name the unix, do not name the HW), they wanted to go to linux on Itanium, and stoped.
Also, IIRC the article says that the plan was anounced in 2003, when X86-64 was not an option for corporate types.
I can give you 3 scenarios where it may make sense for Unilever to go to Linux on Itanium:
If they Had HP-UX on Itanium alerady, it makes sense to go to Linux on Itanium (you save HW costs).
If they were using IndustryStadardOpenVMS (can you believe that is the name of that OS nowadays?) or Tru-64, is a good way to modernize the infrastructure, and if things go south with Linux, go back to the cozy lap of your vendor.
If you need more than 4GB of RAM.
I guess the Slashdot crowd can think of other examples where it makes sense (at least in 2003) to migrate to Linux on Itanium, intead of Linux on X86-32, or even X86-64.
Pana (for the english speakers, this means pal): I will not try to convert this into a discussion. I did not "conveniently ignored" I just ignored, and I will check. I am a technical minded guy, not a politician, and I am very pragmatic, may I add. If the US Govt wanted to send in marines, whatever the excuse ("they are experts in demolition and rebuilding" for instance), let them do it, get the aid, and latter on, get the marines out.
I think that due to the presence of the marines, and whatnot, all the aid was rejected in the end. Anyway, lets take a walk through Vargas now, and see how it is.
Suficiente por ahora, dejemoslo hasta aqui, mi pana!
I am all for less expensive satellites. The problem with this Idea is tht satellites so small are difficuylt to track, and we already have Huge Problems with all the debris that circles the earth, remaining of previous launches, discarded stages of rockets, et cetera, et cetera.
Those problems are that any of those pieces of debris may collide with satellites and spacecraft currently in use, damaging it. Actually, It is a big Concern for the International Space Station.
Please take a look at the NASA Orbital Debris Program Office, and see for yoursefl why this seems like a bad Idea
As per rules and regulations of foreign policy. The Aid will not be delivered until it is requested.
When we had our desaster here (Vargas 1999), Mr. Chavez was ofered aid from the USA, and he declined it because his administration feared that there would be spyes infiltrated in the relief personel.
I guess Mr. Bush will go by the same token. The only difference being that the USA is in a much better position to reject the aid than venezuela was in its time.
Think of it as just another outburst in an already agitaded foreign policy between the two countries.
If you all did not notice, I do not like Mr. Chavez, or Mr. Bush, albeit, for different reasons in each case.
Methangel, You are either insensitive, or wrote under the influence of meth;-)
Going on your arguments, one by one:
a.) Actually, it is the east coast of the oceans the ones that have the hurricanes... That is why europe and California may see heavy rain but not hurricanes. In the East cost of the pacific ocean, the hurricanes are called Typoon (or is it typhoon) or Monzon....
b.) If global warming does indeed occur, sealevels will rise a tad (some estimate between 5 or 10 mteres, where 1inch = 2,54cm and 1cm=0,001meters). So, In the future, you can count on MANY MORE cities being below sea level. Would you relocate all of New York away from the ocean...
The dutch have been very busy for centuries building dams and pumping water out (with may of those windmills). That is why most of their territory is below sea level. One can wander: If something like that can be done to save some of those cities? and What will happen to the dutch?
The most frightening part is that the storm changed course in the last minute, and spared new orleans the bulk of it. Imagine what would have happened otherwise?
The Thelephone Systemm is designed with statistical multiplexing in mind (extremely simplified explanation: the capacity is that of what is expected in the peak hour as an average) but the system is not able to fullfill EVERY SINGLE REQUEST from EVERY SINGLE USER at the same time. For those interested, the capasity is derived from Earlang tables (link for the Danish Matematician: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agner_Krarup_Erlang/ Link for the unit and calculations in telecoms: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erlang_unit/)
Mobile systems, being telecom systems, are designed along the same lines, but allowing for mobility. That is why, when there is rush hour, or when there is a concert, or when there are demonstartions (in my country, Venezuela, at least) it was hard to get throug. With Mobile systems, you have two choke points. The antena itself (Called BTS in GSM terms, I will use GSM terminology because I worked for 6 years in various positions and capacities the field), and the switch itself (MSC, again in GSM Terms). Normaly you engineer the system so that the blocking rate due to the MSC is many times lower that the blocking rate due to the BTSs (RF)
If everybody tries to call 911 at the same time, or call their relatives, or receive a call from relatives, the system will not be able to cope. Add to that the fact that many BTSs (and other infrastructure) will be out of service due to the following reasons: - The Towers/Antenae themselves are damaged - The tower/antenae are ok, but the Microwave links between them and the MSC (BSCs and transcoders taken into account) are missaligned due to the wind. - ADSL Links to the BTSs not working. - Lack of power - Equipment destroyed (A tree falls on the shellter damaging the electronics, but the antena is ok. It happens. Once One of our BTSs was out because some moron fired at the shelter, and the bullet perforated a Satellite modem). - et cetera
Now you begin to see the challenge here.
Is not that there is nothing to be done. In GSM you have a copuple of tricks down your Sleeve. First, you can activate a mode known as Half-Rate. This will decrease the datarate of a voicecall, from aprox 13.3Kbps to aprox 6.7Kbps. The voicequality will suffer, but the (remaining) Capacity of the radiofrequency system will be doubled, just like that!.
The second thing that can be done is to put the system in Emergency mode. In this mode, Some calls get priority over the others. That is to say, police, firefigthers, goverment oficials, the phones of the people that work for the operator, and calls alerady stablished to the emergency number (911 in USA, 121 in europe, 127 here in venezuela) get priority over all other calls, allowing the relief personnel to better coordinate their efforts.
I do not know what can be done in the CDMA200 1xRTT world, but I am sure there are some tricks for them as well.
Here in Venezuela (and in Colombia, where I also worked), we have very bad Electrical systems, so many of our BTSs (and all of our BSCs and MSCs) have battery backup power AND motogenerators, giving them an autonomy of Two or more days (until the Diesel fuel dries out). In a situation like that of Katrina, it may not be possible to replenish the fuel. But to make it worse, in america the electric system is so good, that is dificult to justify the use of motogenerators in the BTSs themselves, but just in critical pieces of equipment. So, after some hours, is goodbye to the cell system. The MSC may Still work, and the BSCs. The SMSs that your family sends you from the other side of the globe will be received, and will be stored in the SMSC server, but will not get to you because there will be no towers on. GAME OVER.
So, is not the ubiquity of the equipment, but a design focused on availability and disaster handling that will allow you to be able to stay comunicated during time
Druuna: Morbus Gravis Was another game which had a sanity system, albeit it was implemented in an odd way. Each time you saved the game, or restored it, sanity would decrease just a little bit, until she became so insane, that the game was over.
" And even though this seems to violate all sorts of cherished physical assumptions, Einstein needn't move over - relativity isn't called into question, because only a portion of the signal is affected."
Of course, the article is written for layman, not Engineers/techs/sciencists.
What one has to do is to go to your local library, get the issue of applkyed physics in question and RTFA.
Ive done that several times with slashdot articles. "Altruistic punishment in humans" comes to mind, just because I used it over and over in my (so far short) managerial career (yes, I am an engineer turned over the dark side).
... get a counter in the front page with the exact number of firefox downloads, updated every minute, and a permament discussion thread about it, instead of getting a: "FireFox reached XXmillion downloads" article each week?
Pirmero que nada, gracias por la correcion en la alabra "Myth". Veras, mi lengua nativa es el español, y a pesar que hablo Ingles y Frances bastante bien, algunos errores se me pasan...
If you cannot read the previous paragraph, feel free to use bablefish. But I assuere you, there are no insults of any kind there.
Second off, Join was in a companinon disk for MS-DOS 6.22 as can be seen here:
Slashdot Mirror
Because of the interference from national governments, there will always be a handful of companies per sector, and wall street does not favor the Chabeol http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaebol concept, and we will have one oligopoly per sector.
But, due to the advances of technology, slowly the incumbents will be displaced, and new firms will take teir place. Therefore, wall street will be happy when there is an oligopoly per area.
Lucent Droped their GSM product line a long time ago. And alcatel has no CDMA2000 1xrtt or EV-DO products. Therefore, the two wireless division are not doing EXACTLY the same thing...
With the rest of the product line, where the products overlap, they will do the usual:
Decide on a surviving product (based on market share, technology, costs, future potential and other reasons), decide on a product map which highlights the life of the disapearing products and migration paths, and finaly, brace for impact.
[begins serious part of post] ...in Venezuela, we do not use that much cooper. The water pipes are made of galvanized Iron, for instance. And no bronze leafs in the curches or old houses.
;-)
As per the cooper recycling, some people, due to the poverty, steal the ground wire of the 3phase electrical distribution to recycle it (and yes, they screw the Electricity supply for the rest of us).
BTW, PVC is not advisable, vecause, when it burns, it releases toxic fumes......
As per de coins, ours used to have a huge content of nickel, and people began melting them for the nickel in 1988.
[end seroious part of post]
[begins the funny part]
So, if you wasteful americans want some consulting on the subject
[the funny part ends]
... that when the WINE Coders were coding the Metafile APIs, they:
/.?
1.) Did not realize this was a design flaw (most likely).
or
2.) Realized this was a security flaw and have been explioting it since years ago (highly unlikely).
or
3.) Have been urging Microsoft to change the code since they realized (highly unlikely, as well).
The point I am trying to make is that this design flaw was not spotted by the many eyes of the WINE project, showing that even the OSS development model is subject to mistakes.
The intent of this comment is not to say which development model is better, just to point out the fact that ALL development models are subjet to failures, and that our analysis should not be so unidimensional and binary, a thought that seems to be quite lost in this particular thread.
As an aside, if this atack was made public in 12/27/05, and confirmed by Microsoft in 12/28/05, shoudnt have the WINE comunity tested for the flaw, posted a preliminary patch ASAP and then post a definitive patch that mimics the efect off the Microsoft patch? Why to produce the patch just AFTER Microsoft posted theirs, late by the comon wisdom of
My other question our regard a Turing-Complete "Image File Format", Postscript. Given the complexity in Postcript, is it not possible (but most likely harder, since it can not touch Filesystems) to do exploits in it?
Just my two cents
The answer to that is that they try to minimize support and certification costs bot for them and their partners. Imagine If you had to certify Oracle For longhorn running on PII, PIII, P4, various Athlons, Xeons, IA64, X8664, PPC, RISC, etc.
Hey, even RedHat and Suse will limit the Microprocesors they support. The fact that Linux "can" be compiled to a multitude of platforms does not mean that it is commercialy viable to do so.
Possibly, there is a version of LongHorn that runs on a PowerPC G5 somewhere, but since you see it only if microsoft releases it, we will never see it....
Microsoft Released Word, Excel, Powerpoint and Visio viewers. meanwhile lotus released a viewer for Freelance Graphics.
Now, on a more serious note, This is cool, the "Player" is far more complicated than any viewer/player out there, and the uses for the thing are intriguing. From the Web Page of VMware, collages can work on a support case and all share the same one in a VM, or you can demo apps in the confort of the VM. The page even points to VMs made available by IBM, oracle and others. Of course, question is, What is the Status of the SW that you run in the VMs, including the OS itself? In the case of FOSS, we know the answer, but in other cases, just watc out guys.
As a matter of fact, Itanium is good for every company involved:
Let S be sales:
S(Itanium)S(PA-RISC)
S(Itanium)>S(ALPHA)
S(Itanium)>S(MIPS)
So Intel sends most of the competition in the high end packing. But the guys making PA-RISCs MIPSs and ALPHAs transfer the R&D costs (Sun has not produced a viable spac in years, The latest chips come from Fujitsu, and the Niagara design comes from a startup they bought, check IEEE Spectrum) and Fab costs (how much does a state of the art 90nm fab costs nowadays? 1.5Billion perhaps?) to Intel... From a financial point of wiew, Win-Win situation.
The only thing is that since now those companies do not have ISA lock-in on the customers (and if the customer is runing Linux on top of Itanium the also do not have OS lock-in) some less efficient companies (less eficient technically, or in marketing, or in sales, or in a combination) will fall to the sidelines... Oh, the humanity! Please, someone tell me how taht is a bad thing!
Of course, some people say Itanium is a pile of dong... I do not know (and do not think so, and if it is, intel can solve it with a huge bag of bills ["a realazo limpio"]). Others say that X86-64 is the cure-all-silver-bullet-miracle-medicine. I do not know (and do not think so, all that cruft, you know?).
The point is that for it's intended use (high end servers), and for the time being, Itanium is OK.
Before it was Slashdoted, and it seems like a Short and long term win win Situation:
IBM Wins, short term: Good karma, and reducing (somewhat) their headcount.
Employee wins: A new career, pursued while still having IBM benefits (like health plan) and partial salary, because they will be in a leave of absence.
IBM wins, long term: Continuin g supply of skilled workforce
Society wins: Teachers.
This is a sort of thing that companies have been doing for a lon time, but this is a very innovative way for them to do it... kudos to IBM.
In Venezuela we dub this "La cajita feliz" (the happy meal, a reference to McDonalds kids lunch). When you offer incentives to the employees to leave on their own will, therefore reducing headcount without layoffs.
Our PTT, CANTV, did this. In HP now, to reach their staffing targets, they anounced a change of the early retirement policy, and many employees arte taking advantage before the deadline, so, in the end, they will reduce the workforce by some number X of employees, but they will have laid off a number less than x, the others leaving on their own volition....
Then they would have to deal with:
Proc Provider (Let's say AMD).
Chipset provider (Let's say NVIDIA).
Mobo designer (Asus, in your example).
If they go to Intel, they can simplify their supply chain from three to just one....
Which one would an MBA prefer.....
Also EAS was the result of a contest made by the _fine_folks_at_NIST_ (I owe a huge debt of gratitude to nist for their fine Open Source ATM network Simulator that I used in my thesis http://w3.antd.nist.gov/Hsntg/prd_atm-sim.html/).
7 6.htm/
The code that won was developed by a Belgian team, and therefore, not bounded by the restrictions, even if those restrictions were still enforced....
The press release from the _fine_folks_of_NIST_:
http://www.nist.gov/public_affairs/releases/g00-1
And that is, platform and chipsets.
Yes, Intel has more offerings and better roadmap, and volume discounts, and programmers, and prestige....
But this particular analysis is not mentioning the fact that Intel can give you a system, head to toe. That will allow Apple to move the R&D cost of mobo desing to something else, like SW engineering, or industrial design.... go figure...
Now, if I put on my aluminum-foil-thinking-cap, I can think of the following arrangement:
Intel debuts a new and improved processor/chipset combo, and gives it to Apple with, let's say, six months advantage over everyone else, as beta testers.... If there are no bugs in the combo, all is nice and dandy. If there are bugs in the combo, Intel correts them in the silicon, for all the PC bunch to use, and Apple, having more control over the platform than anyone else in the indutry, corrects the errors via a BIOS/OS patch, intead of a more costly recall.... Match made in heaven! Apple gets a six months edge, Intel gets a HUGE and cheap field trial of new silicon!
Just my two cents anyway....
In the end, there was not just ONE magic reason, but a host little thing that made Apple choose Intel over AMD, Transmeta, VIA/Cenatur and all the others out there...
Get a Kickass-wide-monitor-laptop.
2 ,a10-c440-p8,00.html/. Also, have around some good CDs for relaxation.
;-). Hope to be able to get that for my employees as well....
Indulge on the best MOBILE processor known to mankind as of this writing (IMHO AMD-Turion, the only MOBILE processor that supports X-86 64). Add RAM as there is no tomorrow (That is, up to the maximum your laptop supports), and make sure that your laptop's chipset supports dual monitor. Get the Wide monitor breed of laptop, as that way you will be able to see all lines with no line breaks.
Buy a flat pannel monitor as your second monitor, a GOOD keyboard http://www.pckeyboard.com/ and a GREAT mouse.
Put your laptop in a stand, so that the LCD is at a convenient eye level, Plug the keyboard, mouse, and second monitor... presto, that is your platform. Get VMware, and your favourite IDE and OS(no comments here)...
The beauty of this setup is that it is a kick-ass platform, and you can take (most of) it with you, if needed.
Other things that help, a HUGE "L" shaped desk, with your machine in the corner of the "L", plenty of shelfs and a black/white board. Also a nice aeron chair http://www.hermanmiller.com/CDA/SSA/Product/0,159
Try to set all this up in a place with a window with some sunlight and a nice view. Work for like 45~90 minutes, stopping every now and the to enjoy the view for 1 minute. After that get up and for 10~20 min, stretch your legs, get some water, go to the bathroom, eat a snack, chat a little, et cetera. Lather, rinse, repeat.
I should know, as I am describing the corporate setting in which I spent my time from Jul 2001 til March 2004, with a very similar setup, and it worked great. And no, it was not a cube, but an office, with a real door, overlooking the Avila mountain. Left as a consultant, and now I am about to begin my MBA. I'll get back to you to tell you how my setting is after I finish my studies. With any luck I'll be able to replicate that setting, but in a corner office
This is one case where reading the article will not help. The article says that before they had propiertary Unix (do not name the unix, do not name the HW), they wanted to go to linux on Itanium, and stoped.
Also, IIRC the article says that the plan was anounced in 2003, when X86-64 was not an option for corporate types.
I can give you 3 scenarios where it may make sense for Unilever to go to Linux on Itanium:
If they Had HP-UX on Itanium alerady, it makes sense to go to Linux on Itanium (you save HW costs).
If they were using IndustryStadardOpenVMS (can you believe that is the name of that OS nowadays?) or Tru-64, is a good way to modernize the infrastructure, and if things go south with Linux, go back to the cozy lap of your vendor.
If you need more than 4GB of RAM.
I guess the Slashdot crowd can think of other examples where it makes sense (at least in 2003) to migrate to Linux on Itanium, intead of Linux on X86-32, or even X86-64.
... on my mark say [Imitatim Homer Jay Simpson's voice]:
UHMMMMM Penguin!
Pana (for the english speakers, this means pal): I will not try to convert this into a discussion. I did not "conveniently ignored" I just ignored, and I will check. I am a technical minded guy, not a politician, and I am very pragmatic, may I add. If the US Govt wanted to send in marines, whatever the excuse ("they are experts in demolition and rebuilding" for instance), let them do it, get the aid, and latter on, get the marines out.
I think that due to the presence of the marines, and whatnot, all the aid was rejected in the end. Anyway, lets take a walk through Vargas now, and see how it is.
Suficiente por ahora, dejemoslo hasta aqui, mi pana!
Suerte a todos y feliz dia!
I stand corrected. You are absolutely right. So, the sentence should read:
....
When we had our disaster (there was a typo here) in (Dec) 1999, the US administration back then
Thankyou, really!
Suerte a todos y feliz dia!
I am all for less expensive satellites. The problem with this Idea is tht satellites so small are difficuylt to track, and we already have Huge Problems with all the debris that circles the earth, remaining of previous launches, discarded stages of rockets, et cetera, et cetera.
Those problems are that any of those pieces of debris may collide with satellites and spacecraft currently in use, damaging it. Actually, It is a big Concern for the International Space Station.
Please take a look at the NASA Orbital Debris Program Office, and see for yoursefl why this seems like a bad Idea
http://www.orbitaldebris.jsc.nasa.gov/
Use of the shelf parts to make tham cheaper and lighter, and redundancy to make them last longer, but make them the same size as they are today!
Suerte a todos y feliz dia!
I am a venezuelan.
As per rules and regulations of foreign policy. The Aid will not be delivered until it is requested.
When we had our desaster here (Vargas 1999), Mr. Chavez was ofered aid from the USA, and he declined it because his administration feared that there would be spyes infiltrated in the relief personel.
I guess Mr. Bush will go by the same token. The only difference being that the USA is in a much better position to reject the aid than venezuela was in its time.
Think of it as just another outburst in an already agitaded foreign policy between the two countries.
If you all did not notice, I do not like Mr. Chavez, or Mr. Bush, albeit, for different reasons in each case.
Suerte a todos y feliz dia!
Methangel, You are either insensitive, or wrote under the influence of meth ;-)
Going on your arguments, one by one:
a.) Actually, it is the east coast of the oceans the ones that have the hurricanes... That is why europe and California may see heavy rain but not hurricanes. In the East cost of the pacific ocean, the hurricanes are called Typoon (or is it typhoon) or Monzon....
b.) If global warming does indeed occur, sealevels will rise a tad (some estimate between 5 or 10 mteres, where 1inch = 2,54cm and 1cm=0,001meters). So, In the future, you can count on MANY MORE cities being below sea level. Would you relocate all of New York away from the ocean...
The dutch have been very busy for centuries building dams and pumping water out (with may of those windmills). That is why most of their territory is below sea level. One can wander: If something like that can be done to save some of those cities? and What will happen to the dutch?
The most frightening part is that the storm changed course in the last minute, and spared new orleans the bulk of it. Imagine what would have happened otherwise?
Suerte a todos y feliz dia!
...Answer...
Lets see:
The Thelephone Systemm is designed with statistical multiplexing in mind (extremely simplified explanation: the capacity is that of what is expected in the peak hour as an average) but the system is not able to fullfill EVERY SINGLE REQUEST from EVERY SINGLE USER at the same time. For those interested, the capasity is derived from Earlang tables (link for the Danish Matematician: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agner_Krarup_Erlang/ Link for the unit and calculations in telecoms: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erlang_unit/)
Mobile systems, being telecom systems, are designed along the same lines, but allowing for mobility. That is why, when there is rush hour, or when there is a concert, or when there are demonstartions (in my country, Venezuela, at least) it was hard to get throug. With Mobile systems, you have two choke points. The antena itself (Called BTS in GSM terms, I will use GSM terminology because I worked for 6 years in various positions and capacities the field), and the switch itself (MSC, again in GSM Terms). Normaly you engineer the system so that the blocking rate due to the MSC is many times lower that the blocking rate due to the BTSs (RF)
If everybody tries to call 911 at the same time, or call their relatives, or receive a call from relatives, the system will not be able to cope. Add to that the fact that many BTSs (and other infrastructure) will be out of service due to the following reasons:
- The Towers/Antenae themselves are damaged
- The tower/antenae are ok, but the Microwave links between them and the MSC (BSCs and transcoders taken into account) are missaligned due to the wind.
- ADSL Links to the BTSs not working.
- Lack of power
- Equipment destroyed (A tree falls on the shellter damaging the electronics, but the antena is ok. It happens. Once One of our BTSs was out because some moron fired at the shelter, and the bullet perforated a Satellite modem).
- et cetera
Now you begin to see the challenge here.
Is not that there is nothing to be done. In GSM you have a copuple of tricks down your Sleeve. First, you can activate a mode known as Half-Rate. This will decrease the datarate of a voicecall, from aprox 13.3Kbps to aprox 6.7Kbps. The voicequality will suffer, but the (remaining) Capacity of the radiofrequency system will be doubled, just like that!.
The second thing that can be done is to put the system in Emergency mode. In this mode, Some calls get priority over the others. That is to say, police, firefigthers, goverment oficials, the phones of the people that work for the operator, and calls alerady stablished to the emergency number (911 in USA, 121 in europe, 127 here in venezuela) get priority over all other calls, allowing the relief personnel to better coordinate their efforts.
I do not know what can be done in the CDMA200 1xRTT world, but I am sure there are some tricks for them as well.
Here in Venezuela (and in Colombia, where I also worked), we have very bad Electrical systems, so many of our BTSs (and all of our BSCs and MSCs) have battery backup power AND motogenerators, giving them an autonomy of Two or more days (until the Diesel fuel dries out). In a situation like that of Katrina, it may not be possible to replenish the fuel. But to make it worse, in america the electric system is so good, that is dificult to justify the use of motogenerators in the BTSs themselves, but just in critical pieces of equipment. So, after some hours, is goodbye to the cell system. The MSC may Still work, and the BSCs. The SMSs that your family sends you from the other side of the globe will be received, and will be stored in the SMSC server, but will not get to you because there will be no towers on. GAME OVER.
So, is not the ubiquity of the equipment, but a design focused on availability and disaster handling that will allow you to be able to stay comunicated during time
Druuna: Morbus Gravis Was another game which had a sanity system, albeit it was implemented in an odd way. Each time you saved the game, or restored it, sanity would decrease just a little bit, until she became so insane, that the game was over.
2 0Morbus%20Gravis
The site for the Game: http://www.artematica.com/ENindex.asp?inc=Druuna%
The site for Druuna Herself: http://www.druuna.net/
Mod parent UP.
From the Article Itself:
" And even though this seems to violate all sorts of cherished physical assumptions, Einstein needn't move over - relativity isn't called into question, because only a portion of the signal is affected."
Of course, the article is written for layman, not Engineers/techs/sciencists.
What one has to do is to go to your local library, get the issue of applkyed physics in question and RTFA.
Ive done that several times with slashdot articles. "Altruistic punishment in humans" comes to mind, just because I used it over and over in my (so far short) managerial career (yes, I am an engineer turned over the dark side).
... get a counter in the front page with the exact number of firefox downloads, updated every minute, and a permament discussion thread about it, instead of getting a: "FireFox reached XXmillion downloads" article each week?
Just my two cents.
Pirmero que nada, gracias por la correcion en la alabra "Myth". Veras, mi lengua nativa es el español, y a pesar que hablo Ingles y Frances bastante bien, algunos errores se me pasan...
; en-us;117600/
If you cannot read the previous paragraph, feel free to use bablefish. But I assuere you, there are no insults of any kind there.
Second off, Join was in a companinon disk for MS-DOS 6.22 as can be seen here:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb
You are welcome!
Thank you very much indeed.