I think we need to examine Shaw vs Vonage telephony for a minute. ***Disclaimer: After comparing the two services side-by-side, I'm a Shaw Phone customer.
Vonage is VoIP running over standard ethernet on the Internet. It's voice traffic competes with every other data packet on the Internet, no matter if it's on Shaw's network, or Telus' network, or the Internet in general. Vonage is portable and available on any high speed network.
Shaw Phone may technically be VoIP, but it runs on seperate hardware (an independant modem with no active data connections), on a seperate channel allocation than Internet (a managed voice network) and doesn't have to compete with Internet traffic. It's routed to the PSTN without touching the Internet so the voice packets don't require QoS. Shaw's telephony is NOT portable, its for home use only.
This is like comparing apples to oranges. I've tried Vonage and although it worked okay, at times the packet loss was unbearable. I don't care what the excuse is (overloaded nodes, Internet traffic spikes, etc), when I use the phone I just want it to work. Period. I also think that 911 is pretty much a required service and there are some significant differences between Shaw and Vonage in that respect, but thats a different debate. Shaw Phone isn't perfect, but its certainly better than Vonage in my experience.
The QoS service definitely isn't a tax because its not mandatory and Vonage works as advertised without it. Besides all that, Shaw can only offer QoS on their own network. Once the traffic leaves their network QoS is meaningless. Would I subscribe to QoS? Probably not, but then again I'm not using Vonage.
And to the earlier poster who suggested that Shaw should reduce the number of customer spambots on their networks to reduce traffic overhead - I couldn't agree more. Turn that bandwidth shaping towards the spam relays and cut their service until they correct their problems. They'd probably gain a significant amount of usable bandwidth for the effort.
Cheap is a relative term. Some might argue that the $80 (when I bought it) Kryptodisk lock I first tested on isn't a cheap lock, but I found it the easiest to pick. I would expect a fairly expensive motorcycle disk lock to perform much better against a $.30 Bic, especially in the hands of an absolute novice like myself.
I wasn't quite specific enough: Its a flaw in this implementation of the barrel style key system. I'm sure there are other mechanisms which correctly address the issue, but given the amount of money that I've personally wasted on a fairly expensive lock, I'll move to something more effective and it probably won't be Kryptonite. My lock was purchased in 2001 so Kryptonite's replacement offer does not apply.
This is a flaw in the barrel style key system. I'm hardly a locksmith, but I've tried this on several of my locks and others just to prove the point, and the majority are not kryptonite locks. All of them have opened without more than 30 seconds of effort.
The sick part is the problem has been well known to manufacturers since 1992, and nothing has been done about it.
Other ISPs do this already under the guise of bandwidth abuse and aceptable use policy. If the traffic sent by spammers is high or there are complaints pointing back to a specific user they drop the connection until they call in to fix their connection.
The problem is explained and fixed or if its virus related they are pointed at a few good antivirus software titles. If the problem returns they get warned that its happened before and the next time they will be turned off completely.
3 steps until they go entirely offline and it makes them aware that they are responsible for what goes on with their Internet connection. Even without their knowledge they could be exploited to hurt/bother others.
The internet has a lot of potentially damaging aspects to it for users who don't know anything about it. Its best if the companies try in some small way to educate the users on their system so that the problems are reduced not just punished. It would be difficult, for example, to explain to my mother that shes responsible for some bulk emailer who routes through Singapore, abusing her connection by spamming through it after she picked up a virus that turns her system into an open relay. Its the users responsibility to control acess to their systems, and the only way it can be controlled at the ISP level is if thats the way it remains.
You have to wonder with the imaging application for doing graphics and the nature of CD data - tis this could lead to some steganography applications. The laser will be able to output data in such a way as to create graphics while the CD is rotating, so it can probably be programmed to read that same data and you get some pretty cool steganography applications.... I would think it would be easy to hide data in a picture made of 1s and 0s.
Given the range of readability and the ease of reproduction, I don't believe this will ever become a keyless entry system. With the readable range they have, anyone could scan your RFID from a few feet away, duplicate the key on a bubblejet and walk into your home. It may be used to track individuals inside an office building, but the entry should be done with something far more secure than an RFID that can be read at a distance and reproduced inexpensively and easily.
I'm no chemical engineer, but the chemical properties of this system seem easy to defeat by simply adding more chemicals to the mix and marking up the RFID. They used the system of chemicals ABCD representing the first 4 binary digits and only A and C present to form the binary value 1010, then properly adding chemical B after the fact should still produce a value of 1110 which negates the entire process.
The demo for the color-changing in the kitchen show two different pianos reflected in the fridge - one is white and one is black. Either they have changed the decor as part of the demo or they have changed the decor to highlight the differences. It doesn't appear to be photo editted since the carpets don't seem to change color...
Beyond that the place is unlivable. No counter space in the bathroom, an LCD over the stove (I'd hate to clean the grease splatters off that) and although I know its all for demo of the lighting the bed is centered in the bedroom (I'm sure they didn't want one wall to look dark when the bed covered the lighting).
Interesting as a demo of the ability of these LEDs to light a living area, the practical demonstration is less than perfect. The only room that appears in reasonable color is the bedroom, and only because there is a fair amount of light coming from the blinds. I think the novelty of the various colors would wear off quickly and you'd be left with lighting that would be tacky and unpleasant. The better goal: match a real spectrum of lighting in an LED, or a cluster of LEDs: Aim for more accurate color representation and then the idea will be much more readily accepted - people already dislike the color spectrum of flourescents and this appears worse in the demo photos, even if the color adjustability is slightly cool.
I know this will sound like a cable company line, but why not get two ceap standard routers, one entirely without any WEP security, but access to only HTTP, DNS, FTP, the basics. Restrict email access, and everything else that might cause problems. Setup a similar router with WEP that enables the ports required for VPN, and services which require other security to be setup: charge a small fee for access. That way ANYONE can surf while they drink coffee (even those who don't know how to change the WEP key and those who need the additional services can pay a small fee. It would be very simple to setup and maintain, no PC required.
Patrons need only pay for the access they need, and the public gets to surf for free. Probably make a few friends in the process and the business people who use the pay service will understand the need to charge to keep the service running. Simple.
Canadians already pay the music industry for piracy in the form of a tax on CDRs. Reardless of use, the Canadian government has placed a levy on CDRs which is reported to go back to the music industry in an effort to counter piracy. Users of CDRs have apparently already been charged for piracy without a trial and are being fined to use the CDR media which is being used for "piracy". It appears that the music industry would be double dipping if they are allowed to charge ISPs since anything charged to the ISPs would be passed to the consumer (more than likely the purchaser of CDRS) reulting in double payment: double-dipping. Hell, even the government isn't allowed to double-dip, but then again this is the music industry: they probably have a thing or two to tell the government about real power...
20nm marks the edge of the soft X-ray band in the energy spectrum and thats not a good thing to put into people's homes. Those freqencies would make working with your case open very dangerous and proper shielding would become pretty important. It's bad enough we're regularily dosed by low level X-ray emissions from CRTs but once we hit that 20nm range we're talking about harmful radiation exposure.
Also the weight of laptops would increase dramatically once lead shielding becomes a requirement...
So here's a question for everyone that thinks this is a great vehicle for the urban commute: What happens when you lose traction? On a motorbike the front wheel stabilizes the machine when the rear wheel looses traction, even if only for a fraction of a second. With the internal gyro on the Embrio, the computer loses basis for comparison and immediately assumes you have just rocketed from 15 kph to 35 kph and the gyro swings the rider forward over the "handlebars" in an effort to correct for the rapid acceleration. At this point physics is not your friend with only 1 wheel...
The second important thing to realise is that motorbikers in genereal already have to ride like we're invisible. We sometimes have to do rapid breaking in order to avoid the idiot turning left at the intersection who cuts us off because hes not looking for bikers. So what happens when you must decelerate aggressively to avoid such an accident? My guess is that with a design like this you are very limited in your deceleration which puts the rider in extreme danger in the event they need to stop rapidly.
As a marvel of laboratory technology this will meet its objective, and sure it's eye candy, but as an urban vehicle I don't forsee a new class of single wheeled vehicles taking over our streets any time soon.
As a parent who will inevitably have to deal with this in the next few years, I think the most important part of what you instill in your kids is a sense of trust. Yes, your child(ren) will abuse your trust from time to time and yes, they will test their boundaries, but if they weren't doing these thing they would be developmentally challenged. Remember back to your childhood and the things you got away with. Your parents did the same things as I'm sure their parents did too - within the constraints of the time period in question. The fact that the Internet has brought these things to the fore-front just means thats its all the more important that they be addressed properly. Ignorance of the truth does not negate the facts.
Every child needs to test their boundaries in order to develop a sense of self and its up to you as a parent to define the boundaries and enforce them to a point. The grey area will always be when the child needs to try things themselves. Understand that if they can't do it at home, theres a 100% chance they can do it somewhere else. And when you determine these boundaries for your child its just as important to tell them WHY you set that boundary. If they don't have an understanding why, then in their own mind there is no reason to adhere to the rule.
I'll bet you didn't care about the hot stove rule until you burned yourself. That slipup probably instilled a belief that the rule is there for you protection. If your kids didn't make those mistakes too, then they'll have an incredibly difficult time at age 18 when they are suddenly placed in a position to defy a lot of the rules they've lived under for so long. Without that level of understanding they're destined to have a very difficult time making that delayed transition.
I think the larger picture is when will the service industry support an alternative to Windows. If you go ask Joe user to recompile something, sure they go - "huh?!" But you'll never get that far until the service providers support something beyond Windows.
Example: If someone calls tech support at the ISP were I work and asks "Why won't my bank software work?" and phone support asks "What version of Windows are you using?" you get an idea where the bottleneck might be. As soon as a customer answers "Redhat, or Debian, or Suse or Slackware" they'd get apolite little cough/snicker and a reply that goes something like "You'll have to call your OS manufacturer or consult your HOWTOs". If nobody supports them, nobody will flock to your OS no matter how configurable it is. Its the reason very few new users want Macintosh. Sure G5s are powerfull and look great, but since only about 5% of the market is using mac, where's the support? And more importantly, where will it be in 5 years? For that matter how much will it cost when the last two people who are supporting it are charging by the hour for all the service calls in North America? OK, that was flamebait. Regardless, Joe/Jill user want a security blanket that Linux can't offer right now. They can't call their cousin who runs the same OS and ask "How the hell did you do this?" and lets face it we've all been in the position of fielding support calls from friends and family.
Admittedly the Linux community has lots of howtos and documents, but most have a list of abreviations and jargon-speak that the average user would balk at. So, the correct answer is, until the OS can support itself or everybody else is using it, the desktop of Joe/Jill average user will remain the pipedream of the linux community. Could be a little while in my humble opinion.
As a service tech I see New.Net, Xupiter, Gator, and Savenow all the time, but I didn't see Marketscore in there anywhere. It proxies your connection through one of Marketscore's own servers - I'm sure its for better service not actually spying on your content... Whatever. Sometimes MArketscore adds 2 minutes (yes minutes) to a boot time and all your info is router through through their insecure proxy server. Total garbage. It wreaks havok on our customers since our email servers will not allow email to be sent from outside our domain, so any customers that have it on their home systems and try to send email get errors. The customers I talk to have no idea how it got there or why its running. Worst part is they don't understand how software doesn't show up in their add/remove programs section while running as a background process. It requires a command line uninstall process which is a bit elusive and makes many customers squirm.
Recently TVT Media has made it onto my $#!T list - go through the uninstall process and it reports that it is gone but a reboot proves otherwise. In fact, if you remove the keys and then run the uninstaller and go back into the registry all the keys are regenerated. We'll see how much more press that kind of crap will get.
Memory Blaster seems to be another growing problem on the horizon too, but its still pretty fresh to say how bad that one will be.
In all truth new.net and Xuptier are probably the worst since they have a tendancy to destroy the winsock portion of the TCP/IP stack and take people offline when DNS queries are returned unresolved. Nice products: NOT.
I've found Terminal Services Access Client is excellent if you do remote administration and in every case I've used it, it has performed faster than VNC. Not to knock VNC, because I use it for other platforms or situations where TSAC may not be applicable. TSAC is awsome simply because I can go online with a Windows CE device and remote admin my servers.
TSAC enabled clients are accessible by installed client software or activex control embedded into a webpage and it allows me to control hosts through my firewall by piggybacking terminal sessions. Especially for machines on my workbench where real-estate is scarce, TSAC/VNC gets things done without extra monitors around. With the exception of BIOS access and watching for POST/boot errors you can do most anything you would do at the physical machine. Check M$ info at http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/technologies/ terminal/default.asp
On Shaw High Speed (Canada), formerly shaw@home, the transition has not been without problem, but given the circumstance I would say its gone well. The long-term plan for Shaw was to move away from @home in the first place.
Having moved DNS, modem provisioning and other @home based functions under the control of their own staff, the most important part of the transition has been email and webspace. The unfortunate side of this has been, strictly speaking, stability. Mail servers rolled out slightly prematurely are causing headaches for many customers. Webspace less so. The operation of quickly moving over 800000 users to new email server has gone fairly well, but the new servers do not currently have all the bugs worked out.
Customers are moving to alternative email providers such as hotmail and the like. Due to the legal issues of @home folding, Shaw was the ONLY ISP to still maintain @home serves, although that has no forseeable future. For those shortsighted enough to still be primarily reliant on soon-to-die @home email, they will get a rude awakening when it all goes to hell in a handbasket in the coming days.
@Home email updates (ie: changes of password) are no longer handled via internal @home software at all. The interfaces have been taken down so that the only available methods to update accounts are though the customer webpage, meaning that @home based ISPs cannot manage accounts internally.
Also no @home primaries (you know the 11 digit number required to generate additional @home email addresses and/or webspace?) have been issued since Sept 1. If you didn't already have one, then you could not register for email/webspace.
They've known a long-time in advance and scaled towards a total stop of services. I think the end of year predictions for @home were optimistic in retrospect.
Logo sweet! I haven't seen logo for about 15 years now. But what a great language to teach the basics of problem solving. Nowadays the only people who woulbe be using it would be repeat4[fd 10 rt 90]. But i digress.
Analog: cheap, standardized video standard, although at the volume you have it will be tough to implement and maintain. While I worked in broadcast there was a tape system using a standard Sony VPR video tape recorder that was normally analog. It would hold a couple hours of broadcast quality video on a reel of 2inch tape. Rumor had it that banks were modifying off the shelf VTRs to do digital archival to the tune of about 300TB per tape. In terms of seek time, the tapes shuttle at 60 MILES per hour so seek time to any part of the tape is no more than 2 minutes. Its an elegant, although slightly expensive solution, but if you are already invested in 1000 cameras, then it may be a viable option. Single unit pulling in about 8TB per day could back up a little over 1 month per tape. Just my $.02.
Lego has always held close the belief that toys should be educational. Shouldn't this be another facet of that same idea? Noga and the people who "hack" mindstorms are simply taking it to a new level. Besides is they can make something works as well or better, why not encourage that level of developement by hiring them on as programmers/consultants for your products. Noga clearly has excellent ideas for mindstorm and with his insight, there may be a whole new area of developement to tap into, something Lego may not have considered.
I have to agree. When was growing up, I had every kind of lego (and still do), but especially space lego because it did have a basic variety of parts. As I grow up I found that the selection of parts increased exponentially creating a huge selection, but it didn't particularily force me to use my imagination in creating an interesting design - it became a three or four piece affair to create some complex design which before required some level of thinking to assemble from many smaller pieces.
The problem isn't variety, variety is good, but kids should start with the basics. It forces a certain level problem solving to create a working design from scratch instead of reaching for the pre-fabricated super-part...
Apple is doing this now -they face dwindling market holding because they are oft-seen as the easy-to-use-but lacking power solution. Not so. Truth be told, Apple could blow away any PC proc based on a purely MHz rating too - this from a die-hard PC user - but this is not the forum for that debate...
Apple has taken the high road. They have begun to educate users en-mass about the problems of relying on the MHz rating. Sure we know better: Intel cannot benchmark equal to AMD on a MHz rating because they cannot run the same number of operations per second. Thats simple math.
The analogy I like is who has more light: if everyone 100 light bulbs but all mine are 100 watt and everyone elses are 60 watt, everybody can see that the 100 watt bulbs are going to produce more light, but it still seems like everyone is comparing the number of bulbs - "Its got to be brighter becasue they have more bulbs!"
AMD has gone the opposite way in the analog, like saying we're giving you 60 bulbs but the amount of light will be the same as intel's 100 bulbs. And most people are still stuck saying "ya but you're ripping me off for 40 light bulbs!" AMD needs to take a better look at how the big picture will appear to the public, are they looking for more light, or more bulbs?
Slashdot Mirror
I think we need to examine Shaw vs Vonage telephony for a minute. ***Disclaimer: After comparing the two services side-by-side, I'm a Shaw Phone customer.
Vonage is VoIP running over standard ethernet on the Internet. It's voice traffic competes with every other data packet on the Internet, no matter if it's on Shaw's network, or Telus' network, or the Internet in general. Vonage is portable and available on any high speed network.
Shaw Phone may technically be VoIP, but it runs on seperate hardware (an independant modem with no active data connections), on a seperate channel allocation than Internet (a managed voice network) and doesn't have to compete with Internet traffic. It's routed to the PSTN without touching the Internet so the voice packets don't require QoS. Shaw's telephony is NOT portable, its for home use only.
This is like comparing apples to oranges. I've tried Vonage and although it worked okay, at times the packet loss was unbearable. I don't care what the excuse is (overloaded nodes, Internet traffic spikes, etc), when I use the phone I just want it to work. Period. I also think that 911 is pretty much a required service and there are some significant differences between Shaw and Vonage in that respect, but thats a different debate. Shaw Phone isn't perfect, but its certainly better than Vonage in my experience.
The QoS service definitely isn't a tax because its not mandatory and Vonage works as advertised without it. Besides all that, Shaw can only offer QoS on their own network. Once the traffic leaves their network QoS is meaningless. Would I subscribe to QoS? Probably not, but then again I'm not using Vonage.
And to the earlier poster who suggested that Shaw should reduce the number of customer spambots on their networks to reduce traffic overhead - I couldn't agree more. Turn that bandwidth shaping towards the spam relays and cut their service until they correct their problems. They'd probably gain a significant amount of usable bandwidth for the effort.
"It's a flaw in any cheap locks."
Cheap is a relative term. Some might argue that the $80 (when I bought it) Kryptodisk lock I first tested on isn't a cheap lock, but I found it the easiest to pick. I would expect a fairly expensive motorcycle disk lock to perform much better against a $.30 Bic, especially in the hands of an absolute novice like myself.
I wasn't quite specific enough: Its a flaw in this implementation of the barrel style key system. I'm sure there are other mechanisms which correctly address the issue, but given the amount of money that I've personally wasted on a fairly expensive lock, I'll move to something more effective and it probably won't be Kryptonite. My lock was purchased in 2001 so Kryptonite's replacement offer does not apply.
This is a flaw in the barrel style key system. I'm hardly a locksmith, but I've tried this on several of my locks and others just to prove the point, and the majority are not kryptonite locks. All of them have opened without more than 30 seconds of effort.
The sick part is the problem has been well known to manufacturers since 1992, and nothing has been done about it.
Gator is spyware!
An IPO doesn't change the predatory marketing stategies of this company.
Other ISPs do this already under the guise of bandwidth abuse and aceptable use policy. If the traffic sent by spammers is high or there are complaints pointing back to a specific user they drop the connection until they call in to fix their connection.
The problem is explained and fixed or if its virus related they are pointed at a few good antivirus software titles. If the problem returns they get warned that its happened before and the next time they will be turned off completely.
3 steps until they go entirely offline and it makes them aware that they are responsible for what goes on with their Internet connection. Even without their knowledge they could be exploited to hurt/bother others.
The internet has a lot of potentially damaging aspects to it for users who don't know anything about it. Its best if the companies try in some small way to educate the users on their system so that the problems are reduced not just punished. It would be difficult, for example, to explain to my mother that shes responsible for some bulk emailer who routes through Singapore, abusing her connection by spamming through it after she picked up a virus that turns her system into an open relay. Its the users responsibility to control acess to their systems, and the only way it can be controlled at the ISP level is if thats the way it remains.
You have to wonder with the imaging application for doing graphics and the nature of CD data - tis this could lead to some steganography applications. The laser will be able to output data in such a way as to create graphics while the CD is rotating, so it can probably be programmed to read that same data and you get some pretty cool steganography applications....
I would think it would be easy to hide data in a picture made of 1s and 0s.
Given the range of readability and the ease of reproduction, I don't believe this will ever become a keyless entry system. With the readable range they have, anyone could scan your RFID from a few feet away, duplicate the key on a bubblejet and walk into your home. It may be used to track individuals inside an office building, but the entry should be done with something far more secure than an RFID that can be read at a distance and reproduced inexpensively and easily.
I'm no chemical engineer, but the chemical properties of this system seem easy to defeat by simply adding more chemicals to the mix and marking up the RFID. They used the system of chemicals ABCD representing the first 4 binary digits and only A and C present to form the binary value 1010, then properly adding chemical B after the fact should still produce a value of 1110 which negates the entire process.
The demo for the color-changing in the kitchen show two different pianos reflected in the fridge - one is white and one is black. Either they have changed the decor as part of the demo or they have changed the decor to highlight the differences. It doesn't appear to be photo editted since the carpets don't seem to change color...
Beyond that the place is unlivable. No counter space in the bathroom, an LCD over the stove (I'd hate to clean the grease splatters off that) and although I know its all for demo of the lighting the bed is centered in the bedroom (I'm sure they didn't want one wall to look dark when the bed covered the lighting).
Interesting as a demo of the ability of these LEDs to light a living area, the practical demonstration is less than perfect. The only room that appears in reasonable color is the bedroom, and only because there is a fair amount of light coming from the blinds. I think the novelty of the various colors would wear off quickly and you'd be left with lighting that would be tacky and unpleasant. The better goal: match a real spectrum of lighting in an LED, or a cluster of LEDs: Aim for more accurate color representation and then the idea will be much more readily accepted - people already dislike the color spectrum of flourescents and this appears worse in the demo photos, even if the color adjustability is slightly cool.
1) Windows CE on Xbox
2) ???
3) Profit!!!
Ya maybe for Microsoft...
I know this will sound like a cable company line, but why not get two ceap standard routers, one entirely without any WEP security, but access to only HTTP, DNS, FTP, the basics. Restrict email access, and everything else that might cause problems. Setup a similar router with WEP that enables the ports required for VPN, and services which require other security to be setup: charge a small fee for access. That way ANYONE can surf while they drink coffee (even those who don't know how to change the WEP key and those who need the additional services can pay a small fee. It would be very simple to setup and maintain, no PC required.
Patrons need only pay for the access they need, and the public gets to surf for free. Probably make a few friends in the process and the business people who use the pay service will understand the need to charge to keep the service running. Simple.
Canadians already pay the music industry for piracy in the form of a tax on CDRs. Reardless of use, the Canadian government has placed a levy on CDRs which is reported to go back to the music industry in an effort to counter piracy. Users of CDRs have apparently already been charged for piracy without a trial and are being fined to use the CDR media which is being used for "piracy". It appears that the music industry would be double dipping if they are allowed to charge ISPs since anything charged to the ISPs would be passed to the consumer (more than likely the purchaser of CDRS) reulting in double payment: double-dipping. Hell, even the government isn't allowed to double-dip, but then again this is the music industry: they probably have a thing or two to tell the government about real power...
20nm marks the edge of the soft X-ray band in the energy spectrum and thats not a good thing to put into people's homes. Those freqencies would make working with your case open very dangerous and proper shielding would become pretty important. It's bad enough we're regularily dosed by low level X-ray emissions from CRTs but once we hit that 20nm range we're talking about harmful radiation exposure.
Also the weight of laptops would increase dramatically once lead shielding becomes a requirement...
So here's a question for everyone that thinks this is a great vehicle for the urban commute: What happens when you lose traction? On a motorbike the front wheel stabilizes the machine when the rear wheel looses traction, even if only for a fraction of a second. With the internal gyro on the Embrio, the computer loses basis for comparison and immediately assumes you have just rocketed from 15 kph to 35 kph and the gyro swings the rider forward over the "handlebars" in an effort to correct for the rapid acceleration. At this point physics is not your friend with only 1 wheel...
The second important thing to realise is that motorbikers in genereal already have to ride like we're invisible. We sometimes have to do rapid breaking in order to avoid the idiot turning left at the intersection who cuts us off because hes not looking for bikers. So what happens when you must decelerate aggressively to avoid such an accident? My guess is that with a design like this you are very limited in your deceleration which puts the rider in extreme danger in the event they need to stop rapidly.
As a marvel of laboratory technology this will meet its objective, and sure it's eye candy, but as an urban vehicle I don't forsee a new class of single wheeled vehicles taking over our streets any time soon.
As a parent who will inevitably have to deal with this in the next few years, I think the most important part of what you instill in your kids is a sense of trust. Yes, your child(ren) will abuse your trust from time to time and yes, they will test their boundaries, but if they weren't doing these thing they would be developmentally challenged. Remember back to your childhood and the things you got away with. Your parents did the same things as I'm sure their parents did too - within the constraints of the time period in question. The fact that the Internet has brought these things to the fore-front just means thats its all the more important that they be addressed properly. Ignorance of the truth does not negate the facts.
Every child needs to test their boundaries in order to develop a sense of self and its up to you as a parent to define the boundaries and enforce them to a point. The grey area will always be when the child needs to try things themselves. Understand that if they can't do it at home, theres a 100% chance they can do it somewhere else. And when you determine these boundaries for your child its just as important to tell them WHY you set that boundary. If they don't have an understanding why, then in their own mind there is no reason to adhere to the rule.
I'll bet you didn't care about the hot stove rule until you burned yourself. That slipup probably instilled a belief that the rule is there for you protection. If your kids didn't make those mistakes too, then they'll have an incredibly difficult time at age 18 when they are suddenly placed in a position to defy a lot of the rules they've lived under for so long. Without that level of understanding they're destined to have a very difficult time making that delayed transition.
I think the larger picture is when will the service industry support an alternative to Windows. If you go ask Joe user to recompile something, sure they go - "huh?!" But you'll never get that far until the service providers support something beyond Windows.
Example: If someone calls tech support at the ISP were I work and asks "Why won't my bank software work?" and phone support asks "What version of Windows are you using?" you get an idea where the bottleneck might be. As soon as a customer answers "Redhat, or Debian, or Suse or Slackware" they'd get apolite little cough/snicker and a reply that goes something like "You'll have to call your OS manufacturer or consult your HOWTOs". If nobody supports them, nobody will flock to your OS no matter how configurable it is. Its the reason very few new users want Macintosh. Sure G5s are powerfull and look great, but since only about 5% of the market is using mac, where's the support? And more importantly, where will it be in 5 years? For that matter how much will it cost when the last two people who are supporting it are charging by the hour for all the service calls in North America? OK, that was flamebait. Regardless, Joe/Jill user want a security blanket that Linux can't offer right now. They can't call their cousin who runs the same OS and ask "How the hell did you do this?" and lets face it we've all been in the position of fielding support calls from friends and family.
Admittedly the Linux community has lots of howtos and documents, but most have a list of abreviations and jargon-speak that the average user would balk at. So, the correct answer is, until the OS can support itself or everybody else is using it, the desktop of Joe/Jill average user will remain the pipedream of the linux community. Could be a little while in my humble opinion.
As a service tech I see New.Net, Xupiter, Gator, and Savenow all the time, but I didn't see Marketscore in there anywhere. It proxies your connection through one of Marketscore's own servers - I'm sure its for better service not actually spying on your content ... Whatever. Sometimes MArketscore adds 2 minutes (yes minutes) to a boot time and all your info is router through through their insecure proxy server. Total garbage. It wreaks havok on our customers since our email servers will not allow email to be sent from outside our domain, so any customers that have it on their home systems and try to send email get errors. The customers I talk to have no idea how it got there or why its running. Worst part is they don't understand how software doesn't show up in their add/remove programs section while running as a background process. It requires a command line uninstall process which is a bit elusive and makes many customers squirm.
Recently TVT Media has made it onto my $#!T list - go through the uninstall process and it reports that it is gone but a reboot proves otherwise. In fact, if you remove the keys and then run the uninstaller and go back into the registry all the keys are regenerated. We'll see how much more press that kind of crap will get.
Memory Blaster seems to be another growing problem on the horizon too, but its still pretty fresh to say how bad that one will be.
In all truth new.net and Xuptier are probably the worst since they have a tendancy to destroy the winsock portion of the TCP/IP stack and take people offline when DNS queries are returned unresolved. Nice products: NOT.
I've found Terminal Services Access Client is excellent if you do remote administration and in every case I've used it, it has performed faster than VNC. Not to knock VNC, because I use it for other platforms or situations where TSAC may not be applicable. TSAC is awsome simply because I can go online with a Windows CE device and remote admin my servers.
/ terminal/default.asp
TSAC enabled clients are accessible by installed client software or activex control embedded into a webpage and it allows me to control hosts through my firewall by piggybacking terminal sessions. Especially for machines on my workbench where real-estate is scarce, TSAC/VNC gets things done without extra monitors around. With the exception of BIOS access and watching for POST/boot errors you can do most anything you would do at the physical machine. Check M$ info at http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/technologies
On Shaw High Speed (Canada), formerly shaw@home, the transition has not been without problem, but given the circumstance I would say its gone well. The long-term plan for Shaw was to move away from @home in the first place.
Having moved DNS, modem provisioning and other @home based functions under the control of their own staff, the most important part of the transition has been email and webspace. The unfortunate side of this has been, strictly speaking, stability. Mail servers rolled out slightly prematurely are causing headaches for many customers. Webspace less so. The operation of quickly moving over 800000 users to new email server has gone fairly well, but the new servers do not currently have all the bugs worked out.
Customers are moving to alternative email providers such as hotmail and the like. Due to the legal issues of @home folding, Shaw was the ONLY ISP to still maintain @home serves, although that has no forseeable future. For those shortsighted enough to still be primarily reliant on soon-to-die @home email, they will get a rude awakening when it all goes to hell in a handbasket in the coming days.
@Home email updates (ie: changes of password) are no longer handled via internal @home software at all. The interfaces have been taken down so that the only available methods to update accounts are though the customer webpage, meaning that @home based ISPs cannot manage accounts internally.
Also no @home primaries (you know the 11 digit number required to generate additional @home email addresses and/or webspace?) have been issued since Sept 1. If you didn't already have one, then you could not register for email/webspace.
They've known a long-time in advance and scaled towards a total stop of services. I think the end of year predictions for @home were optimistic in retrospect.
Logo sweet! I haven't seen logo for about 15 years now. But what a great language to teach the basics of problem solving. Nowadays the only people who woulbe be using it would be repeat4[fd 10 rt 90]. But i digress.
Analog: cheap, standardized video standard, although at the volume you have it will be tough to implement and maintain. While I worked in broadcast there was a tape system using a standard Sony VPR video tape recorder that was normally analog. It would hold a couple hours of broadcast quality video on a reel of 2inch tape. Rumor had it that banks were modifying off the shelf VTRs to do digital archival to the tune of about 300TB per tape. In terms of seek time, the tapes shuttle at 60 MILES per hour so seek time to any part of the tape is no more than 2 minutes. Its an elegant, although slightly expensive solution, but if you are already invested in 1000 cameras, then it may be a viable option. Single unit pulling in about 8TB per day could back up a little over 1 month per tape. Just my $.02.
Lego has always held close the belief that toys should be educational. Shouldn't this be another facet of that same idea? Noga and the people who "hack" mindstorms are simply taking it to a new level. Besides is they can make something works as well or better, why not encourage that level of developement by hiring them on as programmers/consultants for your products. Noga clearly has excellent ideas for mindstorm and with his insight, there may be a whole new area of developement to tap into, something Lego may not have considered.
I have to agree. When was growing up, I had every kind of lego (and still do), but especially space lego because it did have a basic variety of parts. As I grow up I found that the selection of parts increased exponentially creating a huge selection, but it didn't particularily force me to use my imagination in creating an interesting design - it became a three or four piece affair to create some complex design which before required some level of thinking to assemble from many smaller pieces.
The problem isn't variety, variety is good, but kids should start with the basics. It forces a certain level problem solving to create a working design from scratch instead of reaching for the pre-fabricated super-part...
Apple is doing this now -they face dwindling market holding because they are oft-seen as the easy-to-use-but lacking power solution. Not so. Truth be told, Apple could blow away any PC proc based on a purely MHz rating too - this from a die-hard PC user - but this is not the forum for that debate...
Apple has taken the high road. They have begun to educate users en-mass about the problems of relying on the MHz rating. Sure we know better: Intel cannot benchmark equal to AMD on a MHz rating because they cannot run the same number of operations per second. Thats simple math.
The analogy I like is who has more light: if everyone 100 light bulbs but all mine are 100 watt and everyone elses are 60 watt, everybody can see that the 100 watt bulbs are going to produce more light, but it still seems like everyone is comparing the number of bulbs - "Its got to be brighter becasue they have more bulbs!"
AMD has gone the opposite way in the analog, like saying we're giving you 60 bulbs but the amount of light will be the same as intel's 100 bulbs. And most people are still stuck saying "ya but you're ripping me off for 40 light bulbs!" AMD needs to take a better look at how the big picture will appear to the public, are they looking for more light, or more bulbs?