I have a.misc server for my department doing apache, postgresql, samba etc. and haven't had a single crash or other "flacky" behavior.
The box is an old Motorola PowerSTACK with a 100Mhz ppc 604. I doesn't have X Windows so I can't comment on that but as far as serving go goes it a little ripper, or as much as one can expect for 100Mhz / 32Meg ram (it does it's job though).
When reading this article I couldn't help but think about the advances of modern medicine especially what is comming with the age of gene therepy and nano technology... and then I thought, why?
The article states the life expectancy of Costa Ricans is about the same as the US (and hence the rest of the developed world). So what does spending 18 times as much on health care buy us, a very slightly longer life and a lot of extra complications.
Complications such as:
- The super virii that are immune to all antibiotics because our "refinements" have been way over used by a pill popping quick fix culture.
- The dangers of missusing cloning IMHO outway any benifits that the technology will bring. Once the gene is out of the bottle there's no putting it back, people with money and power WILL misuse it.
Java is the language of the first 2 programming subjects of the CS degree I'm doing.
- 1st one teaches basic programming (syntax etc) and introduces searching, sorting, writing GUI's.
- 2nd one teaches more GUI'd, more searching and sorting, threads, hashtables, linked lists etc.
How is Java a bad choice for learning any of this? What difference does it make?
The next 2 programming subjects are C and C++ repectively, which focus more on data structures, code performance and other more advanced things that are usefull for building real applications.
I think Java is a great language to teach high schoolers. Of the stuff that not's in Java but is in C++ what would be part of an introductory programming course?
Java also has a bit of buzz word value and that is good (hear me out). I'm sure that a lot of kids will take the class because they've heard that Java programmers make easy $$$. Of thost kids I'm sure that some of them will gain a real love for programming and computer science. And that is a Good Thing (tm).
It sounds like that "stolen" code is for in-house apps and not being distributed, I don't think there's a problem.
My understanding of the GPL (feel free to correct me) is that you have the right to; use and modify the code as you fit, not strings attatched. However, if you redistribute that code (for a fee or gratis), then that code must also be under the GPL, (you must provide source etc).
As I said I don't think there is a problem, "big financial" companies focus on their core business and will not become vendors of ANYTHING other than financial products.
If the apps you are working on are really good they may be sold on a one off basis to a software vendor to then resell. You can bet that a prospective buyer (unless they are complete idoits) will audit the source and find the GPL'd code. They will then come back and say "that's full of GPL code it's only worth 1/10th of the price, your trying to rip us off!". You will then have to explain to your boss why you've tarnished your companies name and wasted a lot of other peoples time.
On the other hand if you are distributing your code and in violation of the GPL is not the original authors you should be worried about it's your own company. Big companies are shit scared of being sued. If the legal dept. gets wind of what your doing I'd expect to see some major shit going down in your department, remember the legal dept. has infinately more clout than "IT" (who everyone hates anyway).
The whole CD vs Records was explained to me like this, the CD sampling rate (44.1 khz) tapers off where human beings can't hear any more, so technically there is no difference in sound quality from records.
Records on the other hand carry a lot more frequencies than we can actually hear, so why sample the ones we can't hear?
When you play a record some of the frequencies that can't normally be heard bounce around the room and come into the hearing range of a "good ear". That why people who love vinyl say that it's sound fuller, more airy etc.
As grappler has said the sampling rate of new formats that are "comming soon" should satify all but the most blind zealots.
I think that 196khz is for multiple tracks. In DVB for example there are sampling rates up to either 256 or 512 khz (can't remember) but that include info for up to 5 tracks of audio.
As another poster said, IAMTMBG *laughs*.
As far as a 4 track goes I can highly recommend getting the Tascam 244 from a 2nd hand music shop. I got an old one dirt cheap a few years ago and it's great, parametic EQ's, and is really sturdy.
The best thing about it is that it's super simple to use, which IMHO is what matters when doing quick and dirty recording.
After a breif and unsuccessfull first attept at uni I joined the workforce convinced a degree wouldn't make much difference. To an extent it didn't, I earn more than most of my degreed friends for example.
But, now I'm doing comp sci by correspondance, I mainly started it because my employer would pay for it but now I wish I'd done it earlier. The big differenc is not only being trained in how to think and how to problem solve but having having "useless theory" to fall back when learning new things.
I'd definately recommend going back to school, in fact I think correspondance is the way to go if you want to do comp sci, you do it at your own pace when you want. For me thats do a huge ammount of work to get ahead then slacken off fall behind then get ahead again, repeat.
Is this i-mode thingy really widely used in japan?
I've seen a few reports on CNBC Asia covering i-mode that back up the articles 15 million users claim.
What these reports also said was that the driving force behind it's high usages rates is the fact that normal dial-up internet access is obscenely expensive in Japan and mobile internet is heaps cheaper!
Prevent "little empires" within a company, this is bad for the company anyways, and it builds cliques, and when a person feels excluded, ie., not part of the clique, they are more open to leaving.
Ditto!
Where I work now is political hell mainly because of EVERYTHING is someones a "little empire". Empires are the root of 99% of the problems in my workplace.
Every new project is shouded in secrecy, the kind of secrets that everybody knows but only a select few are "supposed" to know about.
Knowledge doesn't get passed around. In almost every project someone (who is not involved with it) points out a major flaw that later becomes a real pain in the butt.
Moral plummets because people feel they are getting left out of the new stuff and their experience, which is often substantial is not valued.
What keeps a lot of people is the "golden handcuffs", they get paid too much to leave. The flip side to this is that it keeps the bad people as well as the good (usually more so). The bad ones never leave because they have no hope of getting that kind of money (or in some cases even the same job) elsewhere.
So why do I stay;
- Great hours, 10 hour shifts / 40 hours a week makes for a 4 day working week, the roster is worked out so we have 6 days off in a row once a cycle.
- 5 Weeks holiday a year.
- They pay for my Comp Sci degree and let me study at work.
- 90% of the time my job involves sitting around watching tv. The other 10% is stressfull as hell dealing juicy technical problems (live TV).
- Great money.
- It's one of the few places I can do Master Control and not have to work overnight.
As soon as I finish my degree though I outta there!
During the Olympics I drank a few Fosters at the venues, it didn't taste too bad, in fact I'd say it's better than VB (that's not very hard though is it?).
I wouldn't drink it if I had a choice though, not when Tasmania is putting out fine lagers like James Boags and Cascade.
Think about the speed at which the internet moves and the mistakes companies make trying to keep up. In the business world mistakes are costly, but you can always try again.
Mistakes in law are an entirely different kettle of fish. A law is harder to change than to create, think of it as a bad api, once you put it in you have to support it for ever (Linus?).
I would rather have a slow moving law that gets it right than a fast moving one that failed to think of the consequences.
And yes I know there are plenty of stupid tech laws, but I believe speeding up the process would make things worse. In a fast proccess a loud (corporate) voice will have even more influence becuase there won't be time to find the quiet ones.
You are definately right about JJJ in remote area, it does serve a real purpose there.
I actually think that the network should be broken up so that regional areas can do their own thing but still have the resources of a national network.
The network would be similar to a TV network, a central broadcaster does a main feed with all the national stuff and stuff that is expensive to produce, the regionals are then free to jump in and out when they want to provide local content.
Bad news on the frequencies...
I can't remember the frequency for RRR, don't spend enough time in melbourne.
FBI is off the air at the moment, their web site is here. They are trying to get the upcomming community licence, I'm not sure if they'll do any more test broadcasts, they usually put posters around town when they are. FBI is competing against 2 queer stations, an aboriginal station and one other one I can't remember. Hopefully they'll get it.
Oh, and Triple J is the best radio station in the country, as we all know....
I tried not to respond to this but just couldn't help myself.
JJJ was once a great radio station, back when it was Sydney's community station, before it went national and they sacked all the good DJ's (they never did give us another licence to replace it, do you remember the protests).
Today it is pretty much a tool of the major labels, I have friends in the industry and they treat it the same as any other commercial station. High rotation on JJJ means sales, being national they have a HUGE listenership.
Ever wonder why the reveiwser sometimes sound like their reading a press release (did you hear the review of Madonna's last single?).
Ask yourself how often they play independant bands that they didn't "unearth". The record companies love Unearthed because it saves them $$$ on A&R. And why does JJJ need to have a special segment just to play unsigned bands?
If you have ever listened to RRR in Melbourne or FBI in Sydeny (when it's on) you would see JJJ is nothing special, it just doesn't suck as much as the commercial stations.
I know that I'm just bitter because I live in Sydney and when FBI isn't on air JJJ is all there is. (I do listen to 2SER sometimes but it's so diverse you can't leave it on permanently).
Oh, and when reporting the MS breakup the Morning Show incredibly Pro-MS for an "alternative station" (read: MS just getting picked on by companies that can't compete).
Sorry for the -1: Flaimbait but JJJ is one of my pet peeves, I'm not saying it shouldn't exist just that it's no where near the nirvana or radio that a lot of people to think it is:-)
Included in EUI-64 are two interesting pieces of information: the registered manufacturer of your NIC card and your 48-bit Ethernet address. Surprise! Every packet you send out onto the public Internet using IPv6 has your fingerprints on it. And unlike your IP address under IPv4, which you can change, this address is embedded in your hardware. Permanently.
Scary stuff! Why havn't I heard that before? I'm not up on IPv6 so I'm going to do some research to see if it really is that bad!
One important improvement to the Windows task bar is the option of having the operating system group multiple iterations of the same application?such as multiple Internet Explorer windows?into a single task-bar item.
Sounds almost like they are moving in the general direction of virtual desktops (half assed and no where near as usefull of course;-)
I've got to say this will make my life at work a little less painfull. The thing i notice more than anthing else when using windows (besides BSOD etc) is the lack of virtual desktops. It dives me nuts to have to put every single window in the same space.
btw. no chance of running linux at work, control room, shared PC (must be considerate to others for when i need a night off).
The problem with the field of ergonomics is that there is no single solution.
Damned right.
Before we got the chairs we have now the Ergo Nazi's from HR had us using the most god awful, uncomfortable chairs on the planet because they were the only chairs that met all the critera for begin ergonomically correct for "everybody".
"Everybody" included everybody. This one chair was to do all 5000 people in the company!
After people started sending in massage bills etc for back pain they got HR out to instruct us on how to "properly" sit in the char. They showed us all these sides about sitting up straight, where computer monitor should be placed etc. The problem was that we don't type all day, we monitor TV services (and fix them when they break) at no point did they realise that not everybody did the same thing. It took us over 1/2 hour to get her to understand that thier ergonimic policies did not work for us.
I don't see why this is under toys, ergonomic design is a really important when you are sitting in the same spot all day every day.
I work in a TV master control and let me tell you chairs are serious business when you spend every shift sitting down looking at a 200+ monitor wall.
The chairs we have now are Recaro's (seats they put in racing cars) and they are a god send. We had to fight tooth and nail for them though because they are expensive, about twice the cost of the chair that the CEO sits in. When they arrived complaints about back pain dropped to near zero. A good char is damned inportant.
I would LOVE a chair like this, and not just because it a cool toy/status symbol but because even the best designed chair is not right for everybody.
Ethical motivation:
I like to preserve as much of the environment as I can. The production of chips is a very resource intensive process, and the complexity of a chip means that a lot of the produced chips are incorrect. I dislike wasting good materials, and even if they are merely `good enough' they should be taken seriously. By allowing the use of such `good enough' memory chips, I hope to help preserving the environment.
Computers are pretty darn unbiodegradable, yet the pace of progress makes them obsolete at an ever increasing pace. How many 386's are somewhere other than landfill? A 386 is not actually that old when you compare it to a washing machine or a fridge.
A lot of people are slamming this because it has some practical limitations, so what!
This guy has done a pretty cool hack, but has also done something positive about side of our industry that most of don't think about very often.
About the only thing that Betamax shares with the various incarnations of Betacam is the shape of the 30min cassettes.
Betacam is nice, it has succeeded in broadcast because it's VERY good (there are about 100 DigitalBetacam machines at my work), but comparing them to consumer Betamax is pretty pointless.
Slashdot Mirror
I have a .misc server for my department doing apache, postgresql, samba etc. and haven't had a single crash or other "flacky" behavior.
The box is an old Motorola PowerSTACK with a 100Mhz ppc 604. I doesn't have X Windows so I can't comment on that but as far as serving go goes it a little ripper, or as much as one can expect for 100Mhz / 32Meg ram (it does it's job though).
The article states the life expectancy of Costa Ricans is about the same as the US (and hence the rest of the developed world). So what does spending 18 times as much on health care buy us, a very slightly longer life and a lot of extra complications.
Complications such as:
- The super virii that are immune to all antibiotics because our "refinements" have been way over used by a pill popping quick fix culture.
- The dangers of missusing cloning IMHO outway any benifits that the technology will bring. Once the gene is out of the bottle there's no putting it back, people with money and power WILL misuse it.
Java is the language of the first 2 programming subjects of the CS degree I'm doing.
- 1st one teaches basic programming (syntax etc) and introduces searching, sorting, writing GUI's.
- 2nd one teaches more GUI'd, more searching and sorting, threads, hashtables, linked lists etc.
How is Java a bad choice for learning any of this? What difference does it make?
The next 2 programming subjects are C and C++ repectively, which focus more on data structures, code performance and other more advanced things that are usefull for building real applications.
I think Java is a great language to teach high schoolers. Of the stuff that not's in Java but is in C++ what would be part of an introductory programming course?
Java also has a bit of buzz word value and that is good (hear me out). I'm sure that a lot of kids will take the class because they've heard that Java programmers make easy $$$. Of thost kids I'm sure that some of them will gain a real love for programming and computer science. And that is a Good Thing (tm).
My understanding of the GPL (feel free to correct me) is that you have the right to; use and modify the code as you fit, not strings attatched. However, if you redistribute that code (for a fee or gratis), then that code must also be under the GPL, (you must provide source etc).
As I said I don't think there is a problem, "big financial" companies focus on their core business and will not become vendors of ANYTHING other than financial products.
If the apps you are working on are really good they may be sold on a one off basis to a software vendor to then resell. You can bet that a prospective buyer (unless they are complete idoits) will audit the source and find the GPL'd code. They will then come back and say "that's full of GPL code it's only worth 1/10th of the price, your trying to rip us off!". You will then have to explain to your boss why you've tarnished your companies name and wasted a lot of other peoples time.
On the other hand if you are distributing your code and in violation of the GPL is not the original authors you should be worried about it's your own company. Big companies are shit scared of being sued. If the legal dept. gets wind of what your doing I'd expect to see some major shit going down in your department, remember the legal dept. has infinately more clout than "IT" (who everyone hates anyway).
The whole CD vs Records was explained to me like this, the CD sampling rate (44.1 khz) tapers off where human beings can't hear any more, so technically there is no difference in sound quality from records.
Records on the other hand carry a lot more frequencies than we can actually hear, so why sample the ones we can't hear?
When you play a record some of the frequencies that can't normally be heard bounce around the room and come into the hearing range of a "good ear". That why people who love vinyl say that it's sound fuller, more airy etc.
As grappler has said the sampling rate of new formats that are "comming soon" should satify all but the most blind zealots.
I think that 196khz is for multiple tracks. In DVB for example there are sampling rates up to either 256 or 512 khz (can't remember) but that include info for up to 5 tracks of audio.
As another poster said, IAMTMBG *laughs*. As far as a 4 track goes I can highly recommend getting the Tascam 244 from a 2nd hand music shop. I got an old one dirt cheap a few years ago and it's great, parametic EQ's, and is really sturdy. The best thing about it is that it's super simple to use, which IMHO is what matters when doing quick and dirty recording.
But, now I'm doing comp sci by correspondance, I mainly started it because my employer would pay for it but now I wish I'd done it earlier. The big differenc is not only being trained in how to think and how to problem solve but having having "useless theory" to fall back when learning new things.
I'd definately recommend going back to school, in fact I think correspondance is the way to go if you want to do comp sci, you do it at your own pace when you want. For me thats do a huge ammount of work to get ahead then slacken off fall behind then get ahead again, repeat.
I've seen a few reports on CNBC Asia covering i-mode that back up the articles 15 million users claim.
What these reports also said was that the driving force behind it's high usages rates is the fact that normal dial-up internet access is obscenely expensive in Japan and mobile internet is heaps cheaper!
That's funny, and true
Ditto!
Where I work now is political hell mainly because of EVERYTHING is someones a "little empire". Empires are the root of 99% of the problems in my workplace.
Every new project is shouded in secrecy, the kind of secrets that everybody knows but only a select few are "supposed" to know about.
Knowledge doesn't get passed around. In almost every project someone (who is not involved with it) points out a major flaw that later becomes a real pain in the butt.
Moral plummets because people feel they are getting left out of the new stuff and their experience, which is often substantial is not valued.
What keeps a lot of people is the "golden handcuffs", they get paid too much to leave. The flip side to this is that it keeps the bad people as well as the good (usually more so). The bad ones never leave because they have no hope of getting that kind of money (or in some cases even the same job) elsewhere.
So why do I stay;
- Great hours, 10 hour shifts / 40 hours a week makes for a 4 day working week, the roster is worked out so we have 6 days off in a row once a cycle.
- 5 Weeks holiday a year.
- They pay for my Comp Sci degree and let me study at work.
- 90% of the time my job involves sitting around watching tv. The other 10% is stressfull as hell dealing juicy technical problems (live TV). - Great money. - It's one of the few places I can do Master Control and not have to work overnight.
As soon as I finish my degree though I outta there!
I wouldn't drink it if I had a choice though, not when Tasmania is putting out fine lagers like James Boags and Cascade.
Given that the Southern Cross fibre is a joint venture betweeen Optus, Telecom NZ and MCI (ie. the competition) it makes sense that the it's not used.
That said it still doesn't explain the fscked up route the packet takes.
I was just remembering a post that said IE5 on Solaris had practically the whole of Win95 in it.
What if the ports for C#/CLR came with huge chunks of Win2k to provide the api's? .NET would then be protable, bloated but protable.
Just a thought.
Did you know that longer beer lines make for worse tasting beer.
All the pubs I know with great beer have the kegs as close to the taps as possible.
Is this a neccessary evil?
Think about the speed at which the internet moves and the mistakes companies make trying to keep up. In the business world mistakes are costly, but you can always try again.
Mistakes in law are an entirely different kettle of fish. A law is harder to change than to create, think of it as a bad api, once you put it in you have to support it for ever (Linus?).
I would rather have a slow moving law that gets it right than a fast moving one that failed to think of the consequences.
And yes I know there are plenty of stupid tech laws, but I believe speeding up the process would make things worse. In a fast proccess a loud (corporate) voice will have even more influence becuase there won't be time to find the quiet ones.
I actually think that the network should be broken up so that regional areas can do their own thing but still have the resources of a national network.
The network would be similar to a TV network, a central broadcaster does a main feed with all the national stuff and stuff that is expensive to produce, the regionals are then free to jump in and out when they want to provide local content.
Bad news on the frequencies...
I can't remember the frequency for RRR, don't spend enough time in melbourne.
FBI is off the air at the moment, their web site is here. They are trying to get the upcomming community licence, I'm not sure if they'll do any more test broadcasts, they usually put posters around town when they are. FBI is competing against 2 queer stations, an aboriginal station and one other one I can't remember. Hopefully they'll get it.
I tried not to respond to this but just couldn't help myself.
JJJ was once a great radio station, back when it was Sydney's community station, before it went national and they sacked all the good DJ's (they never did give us another licence to replace it, do you remember the protests).
Today it is pretty much a tool of the major labels, I have friends in the industry and they treat it the same as any other commercial station. High rotation on JJJ means sales, being national they have a HUGE listenership.
Ever wonder why the reveiwser sometimes sound like their reading a press release (did you hear the review of Madonna's last single?).
Ask yourself how often they play independant bands that they didn't "unearth". The record companies love Unearthed because it saves them $$$ on A&R. And why does JJJ need to have a special segment just to play unsigned bands?
If you have ever listened to RRR in Melbourne or FBI in Sydeny (when it's on) you would see JJJ is nothing special, it just doesn't suck as much as the commercial stations.
I know that I'm just bitter because I live in Sydney and when FBI isn't on air JJJ is all there is. (I do listen to 2SER sometimes but it's so diverse you can't leave it on permanently).
Oh, and when reporting the MS breakup the Morning Show incredibly Pro-MS for an "alternative station" (read: MS just getting picked on by companies that can't compete).
Sorry for the -1: Flaimbait but JJJ is one of my pet peeves, I'm not saying it shouldn't exist just that it's no where near the nirvana or radio that a lot of people to think it is :-)
Scary stuff! Why havn't I heard that before? I'm not up on IPv6 so I'm going to do some research to see if it really is that bad!
Comments anyone?
Thanks for the link.
Sounds almost like they are moving in the general direction of virtual desktops (half assed and no where near as usefull of course ;-)
I've got to say this will make my life at work a little less painfull. The thing i notice more than anthing else when using windows (besides BSOD etc) is the lack of virtual desktops. It dives me nuts to have to put every single window in the same space.
btw. no chance of running linux at work, control room, shared PC (must be considerate to others for when i need a night off).
Damned right.
Before we got the chairs we have now the Ergo Nazi's from HR had us using the most god awful, uncomfortable chairs on the planet because they were the only chairs that met all the critera for begin ergonomically correct for "everybody".
"Everybody" included everybody. This one chair was to do all 5000 people in the company!
After people started sending in massage bills etc for back pain they got HR out to instruct us on how to "properly" sit in the char. They showed us all these sides about sitting up straight, where computer monitor should be placed etc. The problem was that we don't type all day, we monitor TV services (and fix them when they break) at no point did they realise that not everybody did the same thing. It took us over 1/2 hour to get her to understand that thier ergonimic policies did not work for us.
I work in a TV master control and let me tell you chairs are serious business when you spend every shift sitting down looking at a 200+ monitor wall.
The chairs we have now are Recaro's (seats they put in racing cars) and they are a god send. We had to fight tooth and nail for them though because they are expensive, about twice the cost of the chair that the CEO sits in. When they arrived complaints about back pain dropped to near zero. A good char is damned inportant.
I would LOVE a chair like this, and not just because it a cool toy/status symbol but because even the best designed chair is not right for everybody.
I like to preserve as much of the environment as I can. The production of chips is a very resource intensive process, and the complexity of a chip means that a lot of the produced chips are incorrect. I dislike wasting good materials, and even if they are merely `good enough' they should be taken seriously. By allowing the use of such `good enough' memory chips, I hope to help preserving the environment.
Computers are pretty darn unbiodegradable, yet the pace of progress makes them obsolete at an ever increasing pace. How many 386's are somewhere other than landfill? A 386 is not actually that old when you compare it to a washing machine or a fridge.
A lot of people are slamming this because it has some practical limitations, so what!
This guy has done a pretty cool hack, but has also done something positive about side of our industry that most of don't think about very often.
Betacam is nice, it has succeeded in broadcast because it's VERY good (there are about 100 DigitalBetacam machines at my work), but comparing them to consumer Betamax is pretty pointless.
I don't understand how they're going to be any faster than Java/C# when they also have the baggage of a VM.
Anyone know if there's a basis for the speed claim?