Prioritization and QoS is good... and expected. It doesn't mean that net neutrality doesn't exist.
Does this guy actually have any technical smarts at all? Does he not realize that in order to do business, there's a certain level of "oversubscription" that is inevitable? ISP's have limits... they can only afford so much backbone to the Internet. This means that in order to prevent multiple broadband users from taking down the entire ISP, they HAVE to QoS the traffic in order that grandma with her PC can get on and send emails to little Johnny in California while torrents flood the network.
Net Neutrality isn't really about prioritization... it's about money. ISPs QoS the traffic, they just don't (yet) charge for certain tiers. I hope they don't... it would be the death of the Internet as we know it... and probably the birth of another more neutral network.
And for reference, I've worked for several ISPs in my career... and the company I work for today is also an ISP... so yes, I can speak somewhat intelligently on this;)
Basically in summary, I think the paperless office is still coming. It's not there yet... it just takes time and takes people who are more comfortable with a keyboard and screen than with a pen and paper. I am probably one of the first generation of people in the workplace who are in this position, and more often than not the only reason I use paper is to work with senior management (who tend to be older).
As my generation ages, I feel that paperless will become more and more prevalent. Today's devices and computing capability in combination with digital signature technologies make paper irrelevant.
As I look around my cube, I see paper. However, I note with raised eyebrow that none of the paper in question has my handwriting on it... nor was it printed by me. Most of it is stuff from my management, post-it-notes stuck on my monitor by colleagues (mostly trying to get me to call them back) and printed materials from vendors. All my notes are taken on an HTC TyTN and sync'ed to my Outlook. Since I type them, I can copy and paste those notes into documents if I need to... I can drag them over to my other screen so I can have reference material up while I write a document in Word on my main screen. I then convert to PDF, attach to an email or IM and send it to my colleagues. I don't use paper unless I have to. I'd say 99% of my communications and work with colleagues and peers is electronic... the only time I have to use paper is when I have to work with senior management.
Like VR (I agree technology has yet to catch up to the promise) I believe the paperless office will come... and it's coming. The newest additions to the workforce are from a generation who never knew a household without a computer in it. That generation and the one before it (mine) will become the leaders of industry within a few short years... then we're going to start seeing a shift from "comfortable old paper" to something electronic. The form may have to change to be more "paper-like" in order to ease the transition for some even from my generation, but I seriously believe it will happen.
And for reference... I have run a small business at home for the last 10 years... I haven't owned a printer in 4 of those years.
Why did the Paperless Office make the list? I honestly believe that the reason we haven't seen it is more because it hasn't happened yet, not because it won't happen. The transition to paperless is happening, but it takes a change in the way people think to accept it.
Consider this; I am now 34... that means that my generation were the first to have a computer at home that was realistic and usable. I was on the tail end of that group that first used email to communicate, and now I use IM for many of my person-to-person communications.
What does all this have to do with the paperless office? Well, consider that I'm 34. Given average time in college these days, that means my peers of the same age have been in the workplace for an average of 11 years. However, people of my peer group are also the "tweens"... those who are bridging the gap between the technological "old days" and the "technorati". Most people at most corporations today are also older than me; the baby boom was long over by the time I was born... so most of the people who make decisions, review documents and so forth are from a generation who are comfortable with paper and relatively uncomfortable with the idea of digital media. As a result, stuff gets printed out.
However, even I am starting to see a transition and shift. In dealing with my age-peers and those younger than me starting up in corporate life... fewer and fewer of these people are using paper. They don't receive physical mail, the use email (my physical mail box gathers dust most of the time, too). They don't typically use the phone for quick answers... I get IM much more frequently than I get a phone call. When dealing with them I print nothing.
I recently upgraded my laptop to Windows Vista as part of the test group here at the company I work at. I ran Vista for two months, dealing with my peers, my colleagues and just generally getting my work done. Only yesterday for the first time did I actually connect to a printer to print something off... and even that was for a meeting with older staff members. Most of my peers and colleagues carry smart devices, PDAs or smartphones on which the write notes, keep documents they need to refer to and so forth.
The paperless office didn't die... and it didn't fail. It takes time to make a huge change like that, and the technology to make it happen didn't really exist until recently. To say in the '60s that the paperless office would be upon us by 2000 was optimistic... but that doesn't mean to say it's not going to happen at all. I personally believe it's happening all around us, and people like myself and my current peers who will one day be in charge are the ones driving this change.
I wouldn't be surprised to see in another 10 years more of my peers in higher management positions, and a lot less paper in the boardroom.
... or trying to capture your home movies to digital format for archival? This makes a big difference.
If you're looking to start a business to do this, then the software should be the least of your worries and you should be looking at broadcast quality hardware to do the conversion. An OTS VHS recorder strapped to a PC with a raw capture card (they do exist for Linux and they're pretty good with minimal features... check the MythTV Wiki for info on those) is going to give you something that's going to look/sound worse than VHS no matter what you do. But again, if you want to do this commercially, then there's no replacement for quality hardware and software.
An Apple Mac Pro with capture cards connected to broadcast-quality SVHS playback hardware is going to be your best bet... and the software's readily available (though not cheap) and extremely nice to use. No, I'm not an Apple fanboy (though I do use a Mac laptop), but this kind of media manipulation is precisely what Macs are good at and the software/hardware available on that platform is still better than the equivalents on Windows in my opinion. At the very least, it's a more mature media platform than Windows or Linux.
The point I'm getting at here is that if you're going to do it right, you're going to spend $10,000 on hardware... why run free software when it'll only cost an extra grand?
(NOTE: For the pedants out there, I know the numbers are not precise... I'm just making a point, here!)
Now, if you're looking to just convert your VHS collection to digital... screw it. You're never going to get the economies of scale on the hardware you'd need to make the expense worth it. There are plenty of companies out there already who do this commercially, and have the commercial grade equipment to do the conversion. They can do this because they resell the service over and over... most of them recoup the cost of hardware pretty quickly... and they have professional, experienced people who will do the cleanup on the captured video before it's dumped to a digital medium.
I've watched some of these guys work, and they amaze me. You'll end up with something digital and indistinguishable from your VHS tapes... in fact with decent image processing by an experienced editor and some sound processing thrown in the results may appear BETTER than the source material played back on your average consumer-grade VHS player. They won't really be significantly better... but with corrected color balance and resampling and cleanup of the soundtrack you'd be amazed the difference it can make. Total cost might only be around 10% of the cost of the hardware that you're talking about needing to do the job right.
Besides, after spending all that money on the hardware (see above) and doing your captures, what then? eBay it? Good luck... you might get 30% of your money back at the end of the day, and that's presuming it sells!
Honestly? Think about it; Speakeasy made their market and sold their services based upon their "geek friendly" attitude. Now, I know that Best Buy really screwed up Geek Squad... but first of all that was a different business model, and secondly Best Buy are AWARE of how badly they screwed it up and I doubt they want to do it again any time soon. Of course, I get a lot of my business as an independent consultant from small businesses who tried Geek Squad and need someone to clean up the mess, so I'm a little biased:D
Seriously though, I host on Speakeasy as well... have done for 7 years. I have always loved their service, and even though I get a 3mb/512kbit connection for free through work, I retain my service with Speakeasy because their service is just that good. It's slower than the 3Mb connection (though my upstream on Speakeasy is better), but it's more than good enough for the light web/mail hosting I do on that connection and it allows me to run an NX server so I can get into my home systems if I need to.
Now, I could be wrong about Best Buy not screwing things up... but I for one am willing to give them a shot. If I'm down for a couple of weeks while I move to a colo facility then it'll have little or no impact to me personally... hell I've done that before and had a redirect that sent all email to my GMail account for a week while I rebuilt my server recently. I'm quite happy to play the "wait and see" game, but I am hopeful that the deal with Best Buy will give Speakeasy the money to keep their lights on while at the same time improving their service... not losing focus.
Spoken like someone who doesn't deploy patches to an Enterprise.
Do you have any idea the diruption caused by patch deployments even on a monthly cycle? Particularly when reboots are involved?
I realize this is due to bad design on Microsoft's part... but at least with a monthly, predictable cycle I can work with the business to schedule downtime. That's where "Patch Tuesday" comes in.
I also realize that managed patching is the way to go... no matter the release cycle. However, we still end up with the same problem that the majority of Windows machines end up unpatched or patched on a release cycle regardless of the actual release of the patch. While it's predictable, at least that means even the business understands WHY we need to take the servers down once a month.
Basically, the patch-tuesday ideal simplifies life for those poor bastards among us who have to roll patches to several hundred machines at a time... and reboot them!
As a user of 3G, I have to say that my recent change to an HTC TyTN based phone was based primarily on its ability to do 3G. If I need to, I can use it as a modem for my laptop (which I do, daily) when not in range of a wireless access point. Hell, I can do it via Bluetooth, which makes it almost insanely easy with my Macbook Pro to get online and actually get work done. Or not.:)
I agree though, the iPhone lacking 3G was definitely a big hit in my opinion. Most of the major cities have Cingular's flavor of 3G now, and there'll be more by the time the iPhone is released. To me it seemed dumb to pass up that portion of the market that actually needs the bandwidth. I was initially impressed by the iPhone, and I make up the prime target market for a device like this, but when it came down to a solid comparison the iPhone only had the "cool" factor above what the HTC TyTN could provide. In every other respect, the TyTN won.
Now, granted this is based upon my needs... but having used GPRS/EDGE for years and having just gone to a 3G device, I have to say that I am completely sold on the tech. It works... plain and simple. The bandwidth isn't as good as my DSL at home, but damned if it's not good enough to get real work done. For what I do, the unlimited data plans are reasonably priced, too. Yes, I've had my arguments with Cingular... but generally their 3G rollout coverage at least in the areas I frequent (Dallas, St. Louis and Chicago being the three cities I work in periodically) is good enough for my tastes.
I agree with many of the commentators here that this is pretty obvious. We use virtualization a lot, but also realize its limitations. For example, we don't run SQL or anything heavily transaction or I/O bound. CPU utilization is usually not a problem; virtual machines perform as well as their physical counterparts in most instances unless you have a lot of CPU intensive virtual machines running.
Web servers are mostly memory and CPU bound which would give one the impression that they would be great candidates for virtualization. However, VMWare Server is not the solution; network I/O is not good on Server. Typically your results would be maybe 75% of the actual physical speed on a "passthrough", less on a NAT. It depends a lot on how your network is set up, not to mention the abilities of the physical machine.
The best solution is Virtual Infrastructure (used to be ESX). That product tackles most of the failings of VMWare server and fixes them. The only exception is that I still wouldn't run anything I/O heavy on VI. SQL's a no-no. Also, if you're not getting the performance from a single web server that you expect, you can easily throw up more web servers. Now, obviously you might get into M$ licensing issues, but that's why you run your web services on Apache:D
Heh, yeah... I'd agree somewhat there. Trust me, I'm not deluded; there was always crap on the market. It just surprises me when I realize that the good sci-fi I've picked up in the last few years tends to be from established authors. In fact, they're often from authors I read when I was in my teens, some 20 years ago. If you can point me to some good quality authors who have just entered the scene in the last 10 years, I'm all ears!
The problem as I see it is that particularly in America those authors who are getting published all have an Hollywood idea of what science fiction should be. Quite often, the dollar talks; the publishing houses tend to publish that which they feel can make them money, and then by extension so do the authors. Often they feel that explosions and lasers are all anyone wants out of science fiction because that's what they've been taught science fiction is about. My favorite science fiction books and movies distinctly lack lasers or explosions... they're about people.
Re:It's not just Sci-Fi channel; it's the market,
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The Sci-Fi Movie Stigma
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· Score: 2, Interesting
I agree completely. However, this isn't just a problem with the TV market; the book sci-fi market has taken a similar tack in recent years. Honestly, I look at the shelves of recent sci-fi novels, and the ones I've read (an unfortunately much smaller number since I've had kids!) and I found that many of them are rather vapid regurgitations of earlier works, or action crap-fests that essentially try to boil a movie down into printed words.
I honestly am starting to feel that the problem is cyclic; that the "dumbing down" of science fiction in general, and the fear exhibited by investors when those "terrible words" are used result in the inevitvable; people start hiding science fiction behind other plot devices or other means, essentially slipping sci-fi in through the back door. Although excellent in its own right, this is exemplified by the current Battlestar Galactica, which is only sci-fi in the extent that the backdrop is in space; the rest is pretty rote drama. This results in a lot of action movies and TV shows that portray a bad idea of what science fiction should really be to the young. Those young then take this flawed idea of what is science fiction, create a book / TV show / movie and create what they THINK is science fiction without actually creating anything scientific.
What does it say about the current science fiction book market that the last four books I read and enjoyed were (in order) the last three of the original Dune books (not the prequels), and "The Light of Other Days" by Arthur C Clarke; an old-school writer? Everything else I've picked up has been terrible.
What you encountered with sci-fi was further evidence that the market is indeed the problem, but that market's problem extends far beyond TV and movies. By the way, I do know what you're talking about; I've been on your side of the table a few times with Sci Fi and investors. Selling a good concept is hard, even when the stuff's good. Sci Fi particularly don't want to know. If they can't make it cheap and sell advertising high, hang the "Stargate" brand on it or cater to the lowest common denominator then they don't want to know. It's a pity because they HAVE produced some good stuff. Unfortunately they tend to be the exception rather than the rule these days.
And just FYI, a little pandering to our "celeb" here... I'm probably one of the few people who really enjoyed Mr. Stitch. I think I've got it on a VHS tape around here somewhere;)
Prsuming this is related to the VoIP->POTS connection patent (which would be one of the few that I would consider a relatively legitimate patent), then may I point out that there's plenty of prior art out there. One prime example is Net2Phone (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net2Phone) which was a company founded in 1996 to provide precisely this service. I remember using it circa 1996 or 1997 as a way to make transatlantic calls easily and cheaply. It worked. It wasn't perfect... hell it was barely even good... but it did precisely what the patent states. Note the grant date of the patent is 1999... some three years later.
While it's possible that Verizon filed a patent in 1995 and it only get granted in 1999, I sincerely doubt this is the case.
Note I'm not a lawyer... or a patent attorney... hell the only vested interest I have in the story is that I use Vonage to make... oddly enough... transatlantic calls every few weeks. If I lost Vonage I wouldn't really be weeping... but it would make communicating with my family more difficult. At least until I get over to Belfast in the fall and install Skype on my mum's PC;)
If you are really serious about making it sound "professional", then you'll have to be "professional". This means (ideally) a dedicated link between the hosts.
I listen to This Week in Tech (twit.tv) every week and they encounter the exact situation you have. The way they deal with it is either with Skype (which sometimes causes breakup of one of the hosts due to lag or traffic), or they use an ISDN connection. The ISDN is the best "pro" solution because it allows good quality audio to be passed across a digital point-to-point connection. No lag, no problems. The only problem is that relatively speaking the ISDN is slow and expensive. However, if you want a reliable, lagless P2P connection there's really no better solution for the cost... your next option is a point-to-point frac T1 which can get really expensive. Of course, it depends on the amount of bandwidth you intend to use.
I do some part-time work in a recording studio where often a member of a band is "remote" (or in one case, none of them live in the same cities). Since we're talking multiple high-bandwidth streams the studio actually has several P2P T1's. The results can be awesome as we get real-time audio down the pipe at very high bit rates and resolutions... and the recording can be mixed in real time just as if the band members were there.
Body language might be a loss though. ISDN is good when you're pushing high-quality audio... but you won't be able to get video down that pipe as well. The best way I can think to deal with it is to use two connections; an ISDN for the audio and use an Internet connection with a webcam so you can each see the body language of the other. It'll isolate the traffic so that they're not tripping over one another, and the video feed seems to be the one you can most afford to lose (due to latency, lag, packet drops and so forth).
I wouldn't recommend trying to do a solution across the Internet unless you can live with an occasional dropout.
Also realize that if you're creating either terrestrial radio or podcasts, you have a certain amount of leniency since the quality is lower by default than HD Radio or Satellite. I'm all for spending what it takes... but there's no need to spend more than you need.
Finally, realize also that no matter what the final bitrate and quality of your finished product, the higher fidelity the original streams you mix together, the better. Higher bitrate and quality will give you "headroom" for compression.
I've run Gentoo for about 3 years, give or take. Despite comments that the performance gains of compiling from source aren't worth it, try having a PIII-733 Laptop with 256Mb of RAM (hard limit on that machine) that you want to actually USE as a Linux box. Painful with anything except a well optimized Gentoo installation. I ran that for over a year before I took a trip with that rock-solid little laptop. It was a pleasure to use every day of my trip... the laptop was tiny and therefore was easy to throw in my backpack (I was motorcycling across the UK) when traveling, was light and simple. With Fedora the poor beastie just crawled... and Ubuntu I just couldn't get working reliably on that hardware (ironic, I know!)
I've still got that little laptop, and periodically boot her up to do an "emerge --sync; emerge -u world", maybe compile a new kernel. I don't use it as a daily laptop any more since I bought a Mac last year... but it's still a rock solid little machine that I might take with me this year when I repeat my trip in October.
But old hardware isn't just what Gentoo is good at. I use it frequently; in virtual environments. The host... well that can be Windows, Linux... or ESX... take your pick. However, when I need a slick, fast booting and "built to order" Linux box as a guest then there's nothing better than a Gentoo installation that boots the kernel, the VMWare Tools and then the application the guest is hosting! Fast boot, application isolation and simple package management (I usually set up a centralized Portage tree on the host machine). Believe me, the ability to reboot your web server in less than 10 seconds makes management sit up and take notice, especially when the other groups are using IIS boxes that take five minutes to come back from a hard failure.
But Gentoo isn't for everyone, and isn't for every implementation. I wouldn't call it "granny-friendly", and I would only use in a production environment where isolation is possible and rollback is simple (like in my aforementioned virtual environment... snapshots are a thing of beauty). Having said that, I recently built out a new home server and it got Gentoo almost by default. I thought about Fedora... but the flexibility of Gentoo really got to the geek in me:)
I enjoy Daniel Eran's articles... but there are times he makes me cringe. He's an Apple fanboy, and sometimes his arguments are on the extreme end of misled to the point of falsehood. I am a Mac owner... I love it. I think it's a great machine. However, my usage of my Mac doesn't preclude me from recognizing the strengths of other platforms. It also does not lead me into the belief that Apple are omnipotent and can do no wrong... an opinion that I'm afraid Mr Eran seems to hold and will defend vehemently to his dying day.
I read his articles when I get some spare time. Hell, I added the RoughlyDrafted dashboard widget so I could see when a new article was released even if I don't get to read them. However, his recent iPhone series I found to be reeking of fanboyism to the extreme, and he didn't want to hear any dissenting opinion. And this on a product that isn't even out yet! It almost drove me away from the site in embarrassment.
As I pointed out, I love my Mac for what it is; a very solid and reliable machine with a very nice operating system. However, it's not without flaws. Safari for example is still extremely buggy, slow and unreliable. I swear, I saw the "Spinning Beachball of Death" more when I was using Safari than I have since... in fact I know that to be the case. I switched to Firefox and I still have occasional SBOD's, but not nearly as many as Safari threw. Occasionally I'll get one from Finder as well, which sort of blows. I still run Windows in Parallels (and got a Bootcamp installation I rarely if ever use), I run *NIX apps under X11 and I run plenty of OSX apps. However, Mac is not the be-all and end-all. I have a Linux box at home that fills that need:)
I know this is a late reply, but I use Apple X11 and Fink on my Macbook Pro. While it's not perfect it's pretty damned good. X11.app is nicely integrated with the system, but of course X apps don't appear on your dock as icons... but you can use your own icon-manager in there. I have X11.app with the Aqua window manager. I've compiled XFCE which I keep on the left side of my screen with my basic apps on it. For terminal I personally use Gnome-Terminal, but that's in part because I don't want to compile KDE just to get Konsole, and I already had the GTK stuff because of XFCE. Generally this creates a nice light environment, and the windows integrate OK with my desktop (though inside the window decoration it still looks X11!
Fink sometimes lags quite a bit in terms of versions, but it's acceptable. I don't need bleeding edge, or even leading edge. Sometimes I just need "new enough to test my code" and that works fine for me. I agree though, Terminal.app sucks! It's VERY basic and just barely seems to be acceptable. As I said, I use gnome terminal... that works a champ for me.
And as regards the filesystem... well all my Fink stuff compiles and installs under "/sw", so the one time I completely screwed the pooch on my Fink install (my screw up, not anyone else's), I just deleted/sw and reinstalled Fink. Of course, I then spent two days recompiling everything... sorta like Gentoo:)
I will also say though (and somewhat getting back on topic) that I am sort of left cold by some of the iLife apps. iCal is barely sufficient for my needs, though Address Book is nice. Mail.app is nice in a very "2001" sort of way (like Eudora). iWeb? Uh... OK. I haven't even touched that except to check it out once... and wasn't too impressed. However, I did also buy Office 2004 which while chowing down RAM like there's no tomorrow (non-native PPC apps running under Rosetta will do that) I find it very workable for me, and Entourage for all its warts actually fits my needs from a calendaring and contact tool. It's also a very good email tool... though Exchange integration is somewhat spotty... but I don't really care so much as this is my personal laptop (Macbook Pro) and I connect to an IMAP server at home, not Exchange.
Now, GarageBand is absolutely awesome (I do some music production, hence why I was looking at a Mac in the first place) and iPhoto is a very good (though memory hungry) tool for photo management. iDVD and iMovie I can't speak to, I've not used them. iTunes... well, that's just iTunes... we all know that one:)
Now, do yourself a favor and load up your Macbook with as much memory as it can stand. Macs are more memory hungry than PC's, and that problem's just exacerbated by Rosetta. I bought my MBP with 1Gb of RAM initially, and was pretty much unable to use Office 2004 effectively... at least not the way I work (lots of app windows open at once... I multi-task a lot). Once I upgraded to 2Gb it became a totally different beast, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound etc. etc. Jokes aside, it really was a night and day difference. Now I can run Entourage, Word 2004, Firefox (Safari is too buggy for my tastes), iTunes, X11 and a parallels session with 384Mb of RAM assigned to it and my memory gauge is showing at about 1.2Gb used. Not bad... and responsive enough for me. I've also got Preview and Textedit pre-loading so I can view pictures and edit text without waiting for application launch... and I can run Photoshop CS2 quite effectively on this box... though again memory becomes an issue with Rosetta apps.
Hope this helps. Get in touch if you need any more help or advice.
Yeah, I agree. I probably wasn't terribly clear in my initial post. Really, I know a balance has to be found or else it's not going to work out. I probably should have specified this, but you know what it's like when you start typing on a roll:)
My real point (although having re-read my post I seem to have missed it entirely) is that most of the problem comes down to boredom. A lack of something better to do will invariably lead to interplanetary astronauts doing stuff they're not supposed to do. Work is one way to keep people occupied... but you're right; it's not a solution. The way to make an endeavor like this succeed is to make sure that the crew are occupied and happy; a delicate balancing act that'll take someone better than I in analyzing human emotions and the human psyche.
Another thing to think about is that screening of potential applicants must be extremely rigorous. Some people will be able to cope with the isolation inherent in a mission like this, some will be extremely good at the interpersonal relationships necessary to interact effectively with the rest of the crew... but quite often these tend to be mutually exclusive goals. Balance is the key in every aspect, and I know already NASA is quite aware of this and approaching this program the right way; by identifying the key issues early and trying to deal with them one at a time.
You know that sex isn't the problem... at least not as I see it. There are plenty of well-adjusted people out there who can deal with close quarters with the opposite sex without pandering to physical urges. And if they do, so what? There are also plenty of people out there who can separate the act of sex from the emotion of love and can deal with this sort of thing in a very well adjusted fashion. I like to think I'm one of them, but I doubt sincerely I'm going to be selected for a space mission:)
Basically in this regard, better screening is probably in-order for a long-haul space mission than for LEO science missions.
Of course, the problem can be combated in part. Part of the reason that sexual tension is less of a problem on ISS and on the science missions the Shuttle performs is because there's such an insane amount of work to do that the astronauts rarely have time to worry about sex. Seriously. I have a friend who's an ex astronaut (was on more than one shuttle mission... won't mention his name because he doesn't know I'm writing this:) ) who told me that every mission he flew there was pretty much work to be done from wakeup to sleep time and very little time for even socializing with the other members of the crew. There were women on his flights also, and he had also said that by the time they actually flew they had spent so much time together in confined quarters during training and mission prep that having sex with them would've been almost like having sex with his sister. Lisa Nowak is an exception in the space program, not a rule.
So in reality, given the extended training and prep sessions that would be required for a mission of this magnitude, I'd imagine most of the sexual tension would either have been visited on the ground, or at least dealt with. Plus, the key is to keep the astronauts busy during the mission doing science work so they have less time to worry about the close proximity with the opposite sex. Now, the logistics of providing enough supplies on the mission to perform science so many hours a day is a matter for someone else to work out... but I really believe that keeping them busy enough is a great way to (a) deal with the isolation and (b) a great way to keep personal conflicts and sexual tension down.
Of course, there's no way that NASA is going to be able to absolutely prevent this unless they have an all male or all female crew. Even then, I doubt that there wouldn't be a liaison of another type if this did happen. Libido-reducing pharmaceuticals are one possible way, but most of them have side effects that would reduce the effectiveness of the crew during the mission and possibly jeopardize the entire mission.
I also think married couples are a bad idea on a long space flight. In the event the worst happens, losing a married couple is a PR nightmare. Having said that, I think if any of the astronauts on that flight are married back on Earth it would have to be an extremely understanding couple who realize the risks. I know, we should send swingers!:D
What's with the RD links? I'm sorry... I'm a Macbook Pro owner, I love Macs and my wife's next laptop will be a Mac when she burns hers up. But I am not an Apple fanboy quite like Daniel Eran.
I must admit I sometimes enjoy his articles, but his recent series of articles are just his own self-justification for why the iPhone is God! Yes, Steve Jobs has come to Earth to give us all immortality and give us a device of such divine providence that we cannot help but throw all of our alternatives into the eternal flames and give ourselves forever to Apple.
Puh-lease! Sorry, I don't buy it. The iPhone is good, yes. It's fashionable, yes. And it'll sell, yes. But it won't be the "savior of the world" that Apple fanboys would have you believe. And telling them they're wrong only serves to escalate their fervor until they're almost foaming at the mouth.
When I saw the iPhone I wanted one. I liked it, and I thought it would be a nice device. However, the more I learned about it the less I liked, and when I heard that it was to be closed to third-party developers I switched off entirely. The iPhone suddenly became an interesting blip on the radar, but that's all. This is a sad development since I was one of the prime market for the iPhone; tech-savvy Apple-owning middle-class with a decent enough income to actually go out and spend $500-$800 on a decent device that suits my communication and application needs. I've carried a PDA since the Palm Pilot Pro, and was thrilled when decent convergence devices came about. My current device of choice is an aging but reliable Motorola MPX220 that suits most of my needs but lacks in several areas (I like doing hand-written notes on a PDA, so I miss that functionality). This year I am going to buy a new device, but it's now almost certainly not going to be an iPhone.
RoughlyDrafted has been getting a lot of coverage here on Slashdot lately. I am not averse to that, as I said I sometimes find his articles on computing history amusing (if sometimes a little inaccurate and Apple-slanted), but his recent articles just smack of someone trying to convince himself that the iPhone is the greatest thing in the world and he's oblivious to any dissenting opinion. He will only listen to and cover those opinions that match his own or reinforce his argument.
On the subject of this particular article (which I read last night thank you), maybe to a couple of developers in Nokia the Symbian OS sucks... but don't they all? Symbian is an old architecture, that much is true but it DOES work. The problem with Symbian-based devices is rarely the OS but the applications that sit on top of it... that's what you see and work with. To someone who's developed on OSX, Linux or Windows the APIs can seem clunky an unfriendly because the world has improved many things since Symbian was first developed. However, if you use any RTOS or embedded OS from that time period they all have similar flaws due to the limitations of the devices at the time. Every developer I've ever worked with hates the OS they code on for any number of reasons. No platform is perfect. Having worked a little with Symbian I can say I saw the limitations of the OS and its APIs, but for the relatively narrow range of functions it's really asked to perform it's not bad.
I think that anyone who complains about the modern platform they're working in ought to be forced to code for six months in Fortran so they can learn to appreciate how much simpler it is to code to any platform created in the last 20 years!
My feelings? Do Gentoo if you want to; but do it sensibly.
Myself, I run Gentoo in a very small environment. However, I do it in a way that makes things stable, effective and reliable. Simply, my customer has a couple of big meaty servers that run VMware ESX. This provide the stable base. Then the actual work servers are each virtual machines in fault-tolerant instances. Each virtual server has only a small amount of RAM, disk space and resources and each runs a particular service or collection of related services (depending on SLA). Each work server is a Gentoo box.
In this way, if you need to do an upgrade on your email router (an hypothetical box that merely routes mail, not stores it) then you can do your "Gentoo magic" and upgrade it without affecting other services (such as HTTP, or file storage, or... you get the picture). As a bonus, before you start you can snapshot the server so that in the event of a borked upgrade you can roll back immediately and your customer's downtime is kept to an absolute minimum.
It seems to me this is a great way to do things. At the moment, said customer's ESX servers are around 380 days of uptime (last downtime was due to environmental issues, not server problems), and each of the virtual instances vary between the max 380 days of uptime and only a couple of weeks. At least one of them has had a rollback (the file server), but the files the customer used were actually on a SAN volume so they weren't part of the snapshot. Said rollback was because of a borked Samba installation, and time from identification of the problem to resolution was in the minutes. As soon as I realized it was going to take some work to fix, I pulled the trigger on the rollback and tried again during the next maintenance window (which succeeded by the way).
So long as you manage it correctly, why not use Gentoo? It's certainly the most likely to be secure since it can be as fat or slim as you like, and has all the latest security patches almost by default.
First, a disclaimer. This is an opinion. Don't read it as gospel, but instead try to research a little and come to your own conclusions.
Sorry, I just don't buy it. I've read about the death of Litvinenko, and I've done a little homework into this guy's history that seems interesting. I'm not going to delve too deeply in the details, but it seems to me that it's quite probable that this whole thing was a publicity stunt.
Yeah, a guy's dead. But this guy has a history of being violently opposed to the current Russian administration. His history shows him trying a number of times to discredit and/or destroy the Putin-controlled government. He was involved with a number of groups with the same goal, particularly in London.
Now, honestly if you were a member of the Russian government who wanted rid of a thorny problem, how would you do it? Kill the guy with a bullet through the head, or use a traceable, unusual and likely highly public method of killing someone? It seems to me that the FSB would have been quite capable of putting a bullet in Litvinenko's brain pan at any time and suddenly this thorny problem goes away. Besides, it seems from my reading that Litvinenko was no more or less of a problem to the Russian government than most of his other brothers in his societies and groups in England. To say that Litvinenko was such a problem to the government that they'd want to kill him at all is I think inflating his importance.
Now, if you as a group wanted to make a statement that would have worldwide coverage regarding the inhumanity of Putin's government, how better to do it than to have one of your own lay down his/her life in a particularly odd and highly newsworthy fashion? And if you can show that your martyr has been moving around because his movements are particularly traceable then you've just scored extra bonus points.
Litvinenko's death was painful, slow and highly newsworthy. The BBC was all over it... I know. I live in the US but I still enjoy the BBC podcasts every day on my way to work... it was all over the BBC world service for weeks. It seems awfully convenient that a guy who has been extremely vocal in his opposition to Putin's government would meet an end that so amply demonstrates precisely the message he and his colleagues were trying to convey (if it's true, of course). The media coverage also somewhat reeked of an orchestrated media blitz, it was just too perfect.
Now, as for where they got the polonium-210... well, after the fall of the Soviet Union much of the nuclear material that had existed within the country's borders was probably sold off around the world in order to support the orphaned communities who suddenly had very few ways of supporting themselves. It's not such a stretch to think that a sufficiently organized group with enough funding could find a sufficient quantity of polonium-210 on the black market to take the life of one of their own in a massive political statement.
Now, I'm still a little on the fence on this one. I'd say 60% chance that the above is what happened, but I still maintain a 40% possibility that what the media told us about the FSB poisoning Litvinenko was true. Perhaps it was to make a statement to all of those colleagues of Litvinenko that they need to quiet down... but it seems to me that a handful of bullets and a few key members of the groups getting lynched would be cheaper, quicker, cleaner and send the same message effectively. The whole polonium poisoning thing just seems overkill for a government, but seems like a perfect way for a radical group to send a message. It's just a more sophisticated suicide bomber.
As I stated above, this is an opinion. Don't take it as gospel.
However, if an individual is actually dumb enough to believe that a million dollars in 24 hours actually could be channelled to their own account, then they deserve to be scammed. The simple fact is that the amount spent could be subscription fees, land sales / purchases... not to mention donations and so forth. Yes, you can theoretically carve yourself out a piece of that pie, but aren't you doing the exact same thing every time you play the lottery? Hell, every time you go to work you're doing that too.
Personally, I don't see that on the front page as a "draw" as such. I never did... I personally just find it an interesting point of trivia... kind of like the summaries my email server produces of "x number of emails in the last 24 hours, y Gb transferred, z spam mails identified" etc. If someone sees these numbers and thinks "All that money should be going into my pocket. I'll sign up right now and go take it!" then quite frankly they deserve everything they get from then on because they failed to adequately research the opportunities and risks.
I still think my main point stands, though; SL is no more of a pyramid scheme than Email, Usenet, IM, IRC, etc. It's a tool that yes, people can use to facilitate a pyramid scheme... but it is not in itself a pyramid scheme. At least not from my perspective.
It's not a game in the classical sense that there's a goal to be accomplished, scores and so forth... but it is nonetheless a game.
I got into SL a few months back mostly out of curiosity. I didn't buy into the hype being generated by the media and checked it out because I was intrigued (as I have always been) at the concept of virtual realities. I was always a big fan of Gibson and the Cyberpunk novels in general and so I already had a "primer" in the thoughts behind virtual worlds.
Now, SL is not perfect. Not by a long shot. It's sometimes laggy, crash prone and buggy... but it IS enjoyable. I have friends I made through SL whom I probably would never have met in RL. I used to get on IRC a lot about a decade ago, and this provides similar interaction in my opinion. I enjoyed IRC because at the time I lived in East London, and getting on IRC provided me a way of meeting and communicating with people all over the world. Although now I've not logged into IRC in 7 or 8 years some of those same people are still my friends, and they were instrumental in helping me when I decided to move to the US 10 years ago. I don't predict I'm going to make another similar move, but SL provides me with the same sense of community I got back then.
Now, as far as the pyramid scheme thing goes... please! Take a look through secondlife.com (the official site). Although the idea of selling your creations or renting property is discussed, it's not plastered on the main page "Make Massive $$$$$$ Now" or something like that. Linden Labs for all their faults are selling SL as what it is; a virtual world, a community and a creativity tool. If you are creative enough and good enough with the built-in building tools, then you can sell your wares to others and make a little cash. I know some people who do this and make enough in-world L$ to "shop" occasionally. Sometimes they even make enough that they can "own" a small plot of land and have their monthly fees covered by their sales. I have never known anyone personally who makes a massive profit. In that regard, it's more like real-life... if you have a marketable skill (avatar building or building models of ships, houses, furniture etc.) and know how to market it properly you can make some in-world money. If not, you won't. It's that simple. There are no more huge opportunities to make "phat cash" in SL than there are in real life. The only advantage of SL is that it's still a relatively untapped market if you're creative enough.
Hell, I make some L$ in-world by creating real art. I draw, sometimes ink and paint... then I upload a texture and map it onto a simple prim with a nice frame... voila... one saleable item that people will buy to hang in their property. I don't make much, but I cover expenses... and I get to keep the original:) Plus I get kudos from friends who check out my store when I create a new piece... or comments (positive or negative) depending. I like that... it's communal. I don't expect to get rich from it... in fact I doubt I'll ever have to worry about withdrawing L$ from SL so I can't speak to how easy it is to withdraw.
The media has created the pyramid scheme, not SL... and certainly not the majority of the denizens of that virtual world. They're the ones selling the idea that you can get rich quick in SL... Linden I don't think has ever claimed that. Oh, and the SL "millionaires"? Have you seen the exchange rate of L$ to USD? An SL "millionaire" probably has as much in their "bank account" (read that as SL account) in real world $ as I do in my bank account. I am not rich... in fact there are months I juggle bills like everyone else. Plus, I have to note that there were probably more scams being thrown at me in IRC 10 years ago than I have seen in SL. It's just the media ignored IRC because it wasn't "cool" to be geeky back then. The same things have happened... they just have an extra coat of polish and eye-candy.
Slashdot Mirror
Prioritization and QoS is good... and expected. It doesn't mean that net neutrality doesn't exist.
;)
Does this guy actually have any technical smarts at all? Does he not realize that in order to do business, there's a certain level of "oversubscription" that is inevitable? ISP's have limits... they can only afford so much backbone to the Internet. This means that in order to prevent multiple broadband users from taking down the entire ISP, they HAVE to QoS the traffic in order that grandma with her PC can get on and send emails to little Johnny in California while torrents flood the network.
Net Neutrality isn't really about prioritization... it's about money. ISPs QoS the traffic, they just don't (yet) charge for certain tiers. I hope they don't... it would be the death of the Internet as we know it... and probably the birth of another more neutral network.
And for reference, I've worked for several ISPs in my career... and the company I work for today is also an ISP... so yes, I can speak somewhat intelligently on this
Then the fix is easy; right click the CD/DVD and click "Close Session".
I used this yesterday to burn a driver CD for a colleague. For burning ISO images I have Roxio installed.
Paperless Office: I already wrote a comment on this http://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=229549&cid =18620943
Basically in summary, I think the paperless office is still coming. It's not there yet... it just takes time and takes people who are more comfortable with a keyboard and screen than with a pen and paper. I am probably one of the first generation of people in the workplace who are in this position, and more often than not the only reason I use paper is to work with senior management (who tend to be older).
As my generation ages, I feel that paperless will become more and more prevalent. Today's devices and computing capability in combination with digital signature technologies make paper irrelevant.
As I look around my cube, I see paper. However, I note with raised eyebrow that none of the paper in question has my handwriting on it... nor was it printed by me. Most of it is stuff from my management, post-it-notes stuck on my monitor by colleagues (mostly trying to get me to call them back) and printed materials from vendors. All my notes are taken on an HTC TyTN and sync'ed to my Outlook. Since I type them, I can copy and paste those notes into documents if I need to... I can drag them over to my other screen so I can have reference material up while I write a document in Word on my main screen. I then convert to PDF, attach to an email or IM and send it to my colleagues. I don't use paper unless I have to. I'd say 99% of my communications and work with colleagues and peers is electronic... the only time I have to use paper is when I have to work with senior management.
Like VR (I agree technology has yet to catch up to the promise) I believe the paperless office will come... and it's coming. The newest additions to the workforce are from a generation who never knew a household without a computer in it. That generation and the one before it (mine) will become the leaders of industry within a few short years... then we're going to start seeing a shift from "comfortable old paper" to something electronic. The form may have to change to be more "paper-like" in order to ease the transition for some even from my generation, but I seriously believe it will happen.
And for reference... I have run a small business at home for the last 10 years... I haven't owned a printer in 4 of those years.
Why did the Paperless Office make the list? I honestly believe that the reason we haven't seen it is more because it hasn't happened yet, not because it won't happen. The transition to paperless is happening, but it takes a change in the way people think to accept it.
Consider this; I am now 34... that means that my generation were the first to have a computer at home that was realistic and usable. I was on the tail end of that group that first used email to communicate, and now I use IM for many of my person-to-person communications.
What does all this have to do with the paperless office? Well, consider that I'm 34. Given average time in college these days, that means my peers of the same age have been in the workplace for an average of 11 years. However, people of my peer group are also the "tweens"... those who are bridging the gap between the technological "old days" and the "technorati". Most people at most corporations today are also older than me; the baby boom was long over by the time I was born... so most of the people who make decisions, review documents and so forth are from a generation who are comfortable with paper and relatively uncomfortable with the idea of digital media. As a result, stuff gets printed out.
However, even I am starting to see a transition and shift. In dealing with my age-peers and those younger than me starting up in corporate life... fewer and fewer of these people are using paper. They don't receive physical mail, the use email (my physical mail box gathers dust most of the time, too). They don't typically use the phone for quick answers... I get IM much more frequently than I get a phone call. When dealing with them I print nothing.
I recently upgraded my laptop to Windows Vista as part of the test group here at the company I work at. I ran Vista for two months, dealing with my peers, my colleagues and just generally getting my work done. Only yesterday for the first time did I actually connect to a printer to print something off... and even that was for a meeting with older staff members. Most of my peers and colleagues carry smart devices, PDAs or smartphones on which the write notes, keep documents they need to refer to and so forth.
The paperless office didn't die... and it didn't fail. It takes time to make a huge change like that, and the technology to make it happen didn't really exist until recently. To say in the '60s that the paperless office would be upon us by 2000 was optimistic... but that doesn't mean to say it's not going to happen at all. I personally believe it's happening all around us, and people like myself and my current peers who will one day be in charge are the ones driving this change.
I wouldn't be surprised to see in another 10 years more of my peers in higher management positions, and a lot less paper in the boardroom.
... or trying to capture your home movies to digital format for archival? This makes a big difference.
If you're looking to start a business to do this, then the software should be the least of your worries and you should be looking at broadcast quality hardware to do the conversion. An OTS VHS recorder strapped to a PC with a raw capture card (they do exist for Linux and they're pretty good with minimal features... check the MythTV Wiki for info on those) is going to give you something that's going to look/sound worse than VHS no matter what you do. But again, if you want to do this commercially, then there's no replacement for quality hardware and software.
An Apple Mac Pro with capture cards connected to broadcast-quality SVHS playback hardware is going to be your best bet... and the software's readily available (though not cheap) and extremely nice to use. No, I'm not an Apple fanboy (though I do use a Mac laptop), but this kind of media manipulation is precisely what Macs are good at and the software/hardware available on that platform is still better than the equivalents on Windows in my opinion. At the very least, it's a more mature media platform than Windows or Linux.
The point I'm getting at here is that if you're going to do it right, you're going to spend $10,000 on hardware... why run free software when it'll only cost an extra grand?
(NOTE: For the pedants out there, I know the numbers are not precise... I'm just making a point, here!)
Now, if you're looking to just convert your VHS collection to digital... screw it. You're never going to get the economies of scale on the hardware you'd need to make the expense worth it. There are plenty of companies out there already who do this commercially, and have the commercial grade equipment to do the conversion. They can do this because they resell the service over and over... most of them recoup the cost of hardware pretty quickly... and they have professional, experienced people who will do the cleanup on the captured video before it's dumped to a digital medium.
I've watched some of these guys work, and they amaze me. You'll end up with something digital and indistinguishable from your VHS tapes... in fact with decent image processing by an experienced editor and some sound processing thrown in the results may appear BETTER than the source material played back on your average consumer-grade VHS player. They won't really be significantly better... but with corrected color balance and resampling and cleanup of the soundtrack you'd be amazed the difference it can make. Total cost might only be around 10% of the cost of the hardware that you're talking about needing to do the job right.
Besides, after spending all that money on the hardware (see above) and doing your captures, what then? eBay it? Good luck... you might get 30% of your money back at the end of the day, and that's presuming it sells!
Honestly? Think about it; Speakeasy made their market and sold their services based upon their "geek friendly" attitude. Now, I know that Best Buy really screwed up Geek Squad... but first of all that was a different business model, and secondly Best Buy are AWARE of how badly they screwed it up and I doubt they want to do it again any time soon. Of course, I get a lot of my business as an independent consultant from small businesses who tried Geek Squad and need someone to clean up the mess, so I'm a little biased :D
Seriously though, I host on Speakeasy as well... have done for 7 years. I have always loved their service, and even though I get a 3mb/512kbit connection for free through work, I retain my service with Speakeasy because their service is just that good. It's slower than the 3Mb connection (though my upstream on Speakeasy is better), but it's more than good enough for the light web/mail hosting I do on that connection and it allows me to run an NX server so I can get into my home systems if I need to.
Now, I could be wrong about Best Buy not screwing things up... but I for one am willing to give them a shot. If I'm down for a couple of weeks while I move to a colo facility then it'll have little or no impact to me personally... hell I've done that before and had a redirect that sent all email to my GMail account for a week while I rebuilt my server recently. I'm quite happy to play the "wait and see" game, but I am hopeful that the deal with Best Buy will give Speakeasy the money to keep their lights on while at the same time improving their service... not losing focus.
Maybe give them a chance to surprise you?
Spoken like someone who doesn't deploy patches to an Enterprise.
Do you have any idea the diruption caused by patch deployments even on a monthly cycle? Particularly when reboots are involved?
I realize this is due to bad design on Microsoft's part... but at least with a monthly, predictable cycle I can work with the business to schedule downtime. That's where "Patch Tuesday" comes in.
I also realize that managed patching is the way to go... no matter the release cycle. However, we still end up with the same problem that the majority of Windows machines end up unpatched or patched on a release cycle regardless of the actual release of the patch. While it's predictable, at least that means even the business understands WHY we need to take the servers down once a month.
Basically, the patch-tuesday ideal simplifies life for those poor bastards among us who have to roll patches to several hundred machines at a time... and reboot them!
As a user of 3G, I have to say that my recent change to an HTC TyTN based phone was based primarily on its ability to do 3G. If I need to, I can use it as a modem for my laptop (which I do, daily) when not in range of a wireless access point. Hell, I can do it via Bluetooth, which makes it almost insanely easy with my Macbook Pro to get online and actually get work done. Or not. :)
I agree though, the iPhone lacking 3G was definitely a big hit in my opinion. Most of the major cities have Cingular's flavor of 3G now, and there'll be more by the time the iPhone is released. To me it seemed dumb to pass up that portion of the market that actually needs the bandwidth. I was initially impressed by the iPhone, and I make up the prime target market for a device like this, but when it came down to a solid comparison the iPhone only had the "cool" factor above what the HTC TyTN could provide. In every other respect, the TyTN won.
Now, granted this is based upon my needs... but having used GPRS/EDGE for years and having just gone to a 3G device, I have to say that I am completely sold on the tech. It works... plain and simple. The bandwidth isn't as good as my DSL at home, but damned if it's not good enough to get real work done. For what I do, the unlimited data plans are reasonably priced, too. Yes, I've had my arguments with Cingular... but generally their 3G rollout coverage at least in the areas I frequent (Dallas, St. Louis and Chicago being the three cities I work in periodically) is good enough for my tastes.
I agree with many of the commentators here that this is pretty obvious. We use virtualization a lot, but also realize its limitations. For example, we don't run SQL or anything heavily transaction or I/O bound. CPU utilization is usually not a problem; virtual machines perform as well as their physical counterparts in most instances unless you have a lot of CPU intensive virtual machines running.
:D
Web servers are mostly memory and CPU bound which would give one the impression that they would be great candidates for virtualization. However, VMWare Server is not the solution; network I/O is not good on Server. Typically your results would be maybe 75% of the actual physical speed on a "passthrough", less on a NAT. It depends a lot on how your network is set up, not to mention the abilities of the physical machine.
The best solution is Virtual Infrastructure (used to be ESX). That product tackles most of the failings of VMWare server and fixes them. The only exception is that I still wouldn't run anything I/O heavy on VI. SQL's a no-no. Also, if you're not getting the performance from a single web server that you expect, you can easily throw up more web servers. Now, obviously you might get into M$ licensing issues, but that's why you run your web services on Apache
Heh, yeah... I'd agree somewhat there. Trust me, I'm not deluded; there was always crap on the market. It just surprises me when I realize that the good sci-fi I've picked up in the last few years tends to be from established authors. In fact, they're often from authors I read when I was in my teens, some 20 years ago. If you can point me to some good quality authors who have just entered the scene in the last 10 years, I'm all ears!
The problem as I see it is that particularly in America those authors who are getting published all have an Hollywood idea of what science fiction should be. Quite often, the dollar talks; the publishing houses tend to publish that which they feel can make them money, and then by extension so do the authors. Often they feel that explosions and lasers are all anyone wants out of science fiction because that's what they've been taught science fiction is about. My favorite science fiction books and movies distinctly lack lasers or explosions... they're about people.
I agree completely. However, this isn't just a problem with the TV market; the book sci-fi market has taken a similar tack in recent years. Honestly, I look at the shelves of recent sci-fi novels, and the ones I've read (an unfortunately much smaller number since I've had kids!) and I found that many of them are rather vapid regurgitations of earlier works, or action crap-fests that essentially try to boil a movie down into printed words.
;)
I honestly am starting to feel that the problem is cyclic; that the "dumbing down" of science fiction in general, and the fear exhibited by investors when those "terrible words" are used result in the inevitvable; people start hiding science fiction behind other plot devices or other means, essentially slipping sci-fi in through the back door. Although excellent in its own right, this is exemplified by the current Battlestar Galactica, which is only sci-fi in the extent that the backdrop is in space; the rest is pretty rote drama. This results in a lot of action movies and TV shows that portray a bad idea of what science fiction should really be to the young. Those young then take this flawed idea of what is science fiction, create a book / TV show / movie and create what they THINK is science fiction without actually creating anything scientific.
What does it say about the current science fiction book market that the last four books I read and enjoyed were (in order) the last three of the original Dune books (not the prequels), and "The Light of Other Days" by Arthur C Clarke; an old-school writer? Everything else I've picked up has been terrible.
What you encountered with sci-fi was further evidence that the market is indeed the problem, but that market's problem extends far beyond TV and movies. By the way, I do know what you're talking about; I've been on your side of the table a few times with Sci Fi and investors. Selling a good concept is hard, even when the stuff's good. Sci Fi particularly don't want to know. If they can't make it cheap and sell advertising high, hang the "Stargate" brand on it or cater to the lowest common denominator then they don't want to know. It's a pity because they HAVE produced some good stuff. Unfortunately they tend to be the exception rather than the rule these days.
And just FYI, a little pandering to our "celeb" here... I'm probably one of the few people who really enjoyed Mr. Stitch. I think I've got it on a VHS tape around here somewhere
Prsuming this is related to the VoIP->POTS connection patent (which would be one of the few that I would consider a relatively legitimate patent), then may I point out that there's plenty of prior art out there. One prime example is Net2Phone (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net2Phone) which was a company founded in 1996 to provide precisely this service. I remember using it circa 1996 or 1997 as a way to make transatlantic calls easily and cheaply. It worked. It wasn't perfect... hell it was barely even good... but it did precisely what the patent states. Note the grant date of the patent is 1999... some three years later.
;)
While it's possible that Verizon filed a patent in 1995 and it only get granted in 1999, I sincerely doubt this is the case.
Note I'm not a lawyer... or a patent attorney... hell the only vested interest I have in the story is that I use Vonage to make... oddly enough... transatlantic calls every few weeks. If I lost Vonage I wouldn't really be weeping... but it would make communicating with my family more difficult. At least until I get over to Belfast in the fall and install Skype on my mum's PC
If you are really serious about making it sound "professional", then you'll have to be "professional". This means (ideally) a dedicated link between the hosts.
I listen to This Week in Tech (twit.tv) every week and they encounter the exact situation you have. The way they deal with it is either with Skype (which sometimes causes breakup of one of the hosts due to lag or traffic), or they use an ISDN connection. The ISDN is the best "pro" solution because it allows good quality audio to be passed across a digital point-to-point connection. No lag, no problems. The only problem is that relatively speaking the ISDN is slow and expensive. However, if you want a reliable, lagless P2P connection there's really no better solution for the cost... your next option is a point-to-point frac T1 which can get really expensive. Of course, it depends on the amount of bandwidth you intend to use.
I do some part-time work in a recording studio where often a member of a band is "remote" (or in one case, none of them live in the same cities). Since we're talking multiple high-bandwidth streams the studio actually has several P2P T1's. The results can be awesome as we get real-time audio down the pipe at very high bit rates and resolutions... and the recording can be mixed in real time just as if the band members were there.
Body language might be a loss though. ISDN is good when you're pushing high-quality audio... but you won't be able to get video down that pipe as well. The best way I can think to deal with it is to use two connections; an ISDN for the audio and use an Internet connection with a webcam so you can each see the body language of the other. It'll isolate the traffic so that they're not tripping over one another, and the video feed seems to be the one you can most afford to lose (due to latency, lag, packet drops and so forth).
I wouldn't recommend trying to do a solution across the Internet unless you can live with an occasional dropout.
Also realize that if you're creating either terrestrial radio or podcasts, you have a certain amount of leniency since the quality is lower by default than HD Radio or Satellite. I'm all for spending what it takes... but there's no need to spend more than you need.
Finally, realize also that no matter what the final bitrate and quality of your finished product, the higher fidelity the original streams you mix together, the better. Higher bitrate and quality will give you "headroom" for compression.
I've run Gentoo for about 3 years, give or take. Despite comments that the performance gains of compiling from source aren't worth it, try having a PIII-733 Laptop with 256Mb of RAM (hard limit on that machine) that you want to actually USE as a Linux box. Painful with anything except a well optimized Gentoo installation. I ran that for over a year before I took a trip with that rock-solid little laptop. It was a pleasure to use every day of my trip... the laptop was tiny and therefore was easy to throw in my backpack (I was motorcycling across the UK) when traveling, was light and simple. With Fedora the poor beastie just crawled... and Ubuntu I just couldn't get working reliably on that hardware (ironic, I know!)
:)
I've still got that little laptop, and periodically boot her up to do an "emerge --sync; emerge -u world", maybe compile a new kernel. I don't use it as a daily laptop any more since I bought a Mac last year... but it's still a rock solid little machine that I might take with me this year when I repeat my trip in October.
But old hardware isn't just what Gentoo is good at. I use it frequently; in virtual environments. The host... well that can be Windows, Linux... or ESX... take your pick. However, when I need a slick, fast booting and "built to order" Linux box as a guest then there's nothing better than a Gentoo installation that boots the kernel, the VMWare Tools and then the application the guest is hosting! Fast boot, application isolation and simple package management (I usually set up a centralized Portage tree on the host machine). Believe me, the ability to reboot your web server in less than 10 seconds makes management sit up and take notice, especially when the other groups are using IIS boxes that take five minutes to come back from a hard failure.
But Gentoo isn't for everyone, and isn't for every implementation. I wouldn't call it "granny-friendly", and I would only use in a production environment where isolation is possible and rollback is simple (like in my aforementioned virtual environment... snapshots are a thing of beauty). Having said that, I recently built out a new home server and it got Gentoo almost by default. I thought about Fedora... but the flexibility of Gentoo really got to the geek in me
I enjoy Daniel Eran's articles... but there are times he makes me cringe. He's an Apple fanboy, and sometimes his arguments are on the extreme end of misled to the point of falsehood. I am a Mac owner... I love it. I think it's a great machine. However, my usage of my Mac doesn't preclude me from recognizing the strengths of other platforms. It also does not lead me into the belief that Apple are omnipotent and can do no wrong... an opinion that I'm afraid Mr Eran seems to hold and will defend vehemently to his dying day.
:)
I read his articles when I get some spare time. Hell, I added the RoughlyDrafted dashboard widget so I could see when a new article was released even if I don't get to read them. However, his recent iPhone series I found to be reeking of fanboyism to the extreme, and he didn't want to hear any dissenting opinion. And this on a product that isn't even out yet! It almost drove me away from the site in embarrassment.
As I pointed out, I love my Mac for what it is; a very solid and reliable machine with a very nice operating system. However, it's not without flaws. Safari for example is still extremely buggy, slow and unreliable. I swear, I saw the "Spinning Beachball of Death" more when I was using Safari than I have since... in fact I know that to be the case. I switched to Firefox and I still have occasional SBOD's, but not nearly as many as Safari threw. Occasionally I'll get one from Finder as well, which sort of blows. I still run Windows in Parallels (and got a Bootcamp installation I rarely if ever use), I run *NIX apps under X11 and I run plenty of OSX apps. However, Mac is not the be-all and end-all. I have a Linux box at home that fills that need
Yeah, you forgot Porsche :)
I know this is a late reply, but I use Apple X11 and Fink on my Macbook Pro. While it's not perfect it's pretty damned good. X11.app is nicely integrated with the system, but of course X apps don't appear on your dock as icons... but you can use your own icon-manager in there. I have X11.app with the Aqua window manager. I've compiled XFCE which I keep on the left side of my screen with my basic apps on it. For terminal I personally use Gnome-Terminal, but that's in part because I don't want to compile KDE just to get Konsole, and I already had the GTK stuff because of XFCE. Generally this creates a nice light environment, and the windows integrate OK with my desktop (though inside the window decoration it still looks X11!
/sw and reinstalled Fink. Of course, I then spent two days recompiling everything... sorta like Gentoo :)
:)
Fink sometimes lags quite a bit in terms of versions, but it's acceptable. I don't need bleeding edge, or even leading edge. Sometimes I just need "new enough to test my code" and that works fine for me. I agree though, Terminal.app sucks! It's VERY basic and just barely seems to be acceptable. As I said, I use gnome terminal... that works a champ for me.
And as regards the filesystem... well all my Fink stuff compiles and installs under "/sw", so the one time I completely screwed the pooch on my Fink install (my screw up, not anyone else's), I just deleted
I will also say though (and somewhat getting back on topic) that I am sort of left cold by some of the iLife apps. iCal is barely sufficient for my needs, though Address Book is nice. Mail.app is nice in a very "2001" sort of way (like Eudora). iWeb? Uh... OK. I haven't even touched that except to check it out once... and wasn't too impressed. However, I did also buy Office 2004 which while chowing down RAM like there's no tomorrow (non-native PPC apps running under Rosetta will do that) I find it very workable for me, and Entourage for all its warts actually fits my needs from a calendaring and contact tool. It's also a very good email tool... though Exchange integration is somewhat spotty... but I don't really care so much as this is my personal laptop (Macbook Pro) and I connect to an IMAP server at home, not Exchange.
Now, GarageBand is absolutely awesome (I do some music production, hence why I was looking at a Mac in the first place) and iPhoto is a very good (though memory hungry) tool for photo management. iDVD and iMovie I can't speak to, I've not used them. iTunes... well, that's just iTunes... we all know that one
Now, do yourself a favor and load up your Macbook with as much memory as it can stand. Macs are more memory hungry than PC's, and that problem's just exacerbated by Rosetta. I bought my MBP with 1Gb of RAM initially, and was pretty much unable to use Office 2004 effectively... at least not the way I work (lots of app windows open at once... I multi-task a lot). Once I upgraded to 2Gb it became a totally different beast, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound etc. etc. Jokes aside, it really was a night and day difference. Now I can run Entourage, Word 2004, Firefox (Safari is too buggy for my tastes), iTunes, X11 and a parallels session with 384Mb of RAM assigned to it and my memory gauge is showing at about 1.2Gb used. Not bad... and responsive enough for me. I've also got Preview and Textedit pre-loading so I can view pictures and edit text without waiting for application launch... and I can run Photoshop CS2 quite effectively on this box... though again memory becomes an issue with Rosetta apps.
Hope this helps. Get in touch if you need any more help or advice.
Yeah, I agree. I probably wasn't terribly clear in my initial post. Really, I know a balance has to be found or else it's not going to work out. I probably should have specified this, but you know what it's like when you start typing on a roll :)
My real point (although having re-read my post I seem to have missed it entirely) is that most of the problem comes down to boredom. A lack of something better to do will invariably lead to interplanetary astronauts doing stuff they're not supposed to do. Work is one way to keep people occupied... but you're right; it's not a solution. The way to make an endeavor like this succeed is to make sure that the crew are occupied and happy; a delicate balancing act that'll take someone better than I in analyzing human emotions and the human psyche.
Another thing to think about is that screening of potential applicants must be extremely rigorous. Some people will be able to cope with the isolation inherent in a mission like this, some will be extremely good at the interpersonal relationships necessary to interact effectively with the rest of the crew... but quite often these tend to be mutually exclusive goals. Balance is the key in every aspect, and I know already NASA is quite aware of this and approaching this program the right way; by identifying the key issues early and trying to deal with them one at a time.
You know that sex isn't the problem... at least not as I see it. There are plenty of well-adjusted people out there who can deal with close quarters with the opposite sex without pandering to physical urges. And if they do, so what? There are also plenty of people out there who can separate the act of sex from the emotion of love and can deal with this sort of thing in a very well adjusted fashion. I like to think I'm one of them, but I doubt sincerely I'm going to be selected for a space mission :)
:) ) who told me that every mission he flew there was pretty much work to be done from wakeup to sleep time and very little time for even socializing with the other members of the crew. There were women on his flights also, and he had also said that by the time they actually flew they had spent so much time together in confined quarters during training and mission prep that having sex with them would've been almost like having sex with his sister. Lisa Nowak is an exception in the space program, not a rule.
:D
Basically in this regard, better screening is probably in-order for a long-haul space mission than for LEO science missions.
Of course, the problem can be combated in part. Part of the reason that sexual tension is less of a problem on ISS and on the science missions the Shuttle performs is because there's such an insane amount of work to do that the astronauts rarely have time to worry about sex. Seriously. I have a friend who's an ex astronaut (was on more than one shuttle mission... won't mention his name because he doesn't know I'm writing this
So in reality, given the extended training and prep sessions that would be required for a mission of this magnitude, I'd imagine most of the sexual tension would either have been visited on the ground, or at least dealt with. Plus, the key is to keep the astronauts busy during the mission doing science work so they have less time to worry about the close proximity with the opposite sex. Now, the logistics of providing enough supplies on the mission to perform science so many hours a day is a matter for someone else to work out... but I really believe that keeping them busy enough is a great way to (a) deal with the isolation and (b) a great way to keep personal conflicts and sexual tension down.
Of course, there's no way that NASA is going to be able to absolutely prevent this unless they have an all male or all female crew. Even then, I doubt that there wouldn't be a liaison of another type if this did happen. Libido-reducing pharmaceuticals are one possible way, but most of them have side effects that would reduce the effectiveness of the crew during the mission and possibly jeopardize the entire mission.
I also think married couples are a bad idea on a long space flight. In the event the worst happens, losing a married couple is a PR nightmare. Having said that, I think if any of the astronauts on that flight are married back on Earth it would have to be an extremely understanding couple who realize the risks. I know, we should send swingers!
What's with the RD links? I'm sorry... I'm a Macbook Pro owner, I love Macs and my wife's next laptop will be a Mac when she burns hers up. But I am not an Apple fanboy quite like Daniel Eran.
I must admit I sometimes enjoy his articles, but his recent series of articles are just his own self-justification for why the iPhone is God! Yes, Steve Jobs has come to Earth to give us all immortality and give us a device of such divine providence that we cannot help but throw all of our alternatives into the eternal flames and give ourselves forever to Apple.
Puh-lease! Sorry, I don't buy it. The iPhone is good, yes. It's fashionable, yes. And it'll sell, yes. But it won't be the "savior of the world" that Apple fanboys would have you believe. And telling them they're wrong only serves to escalate their fervor until they're almost foaming at the mouth.
When I saw the iPhone I wanted one. I liked it, and I thought it would be a nice device. However, the more I learned about it the less I liked, and when I heard that it was to be closed to third-party developers I switched off entirely. The iPhone suddenly became an interesting blip on the radar, but that's all. This is a sad development since I was one of the prime market for the iPhone; tech-savvy Apple-owning middle-class with a decent enough income to actually go out and spend $500-$800 on a decent device that suits my communication and application needs. I've carried a PDA since the Palm Pilot Pro, and was thrilled when decent convergence devices came about. My current device of choice is an aging but reliable Motorola MPX220 that suits most of my needs but lacks in several areas (I like doing hand-written notes on a PDA, so I miss that functionality). This year I am going to buy a new device, but it's now almost certainly not going to be an iPhone.
RoughlyDrafted has been getting a lot of coverage here on Slashdot lately. I am not averse to that, as I said I sometimes find his articles on computing history amusing (if sometimes a little inaccurate and Apple-slanted), but his recent articles just smack of someone trying to convince himself that the iPhone is the greatest thing in the world and he's oblivious to any dissenting opinion. He will only listen to and cover those opinions that match his own or reinforce his argument.
On the subject of this particular article (which I read last night thank you), maybe to a couple of developers in Nokia the Symbian OS sucks... but don't they all? Symbian is an old architecture, that much is true but it DOES work. The problem with Symbian-based devices is rarely the OS but the applications that sit on top of it... that's what you see and work with. To someone who's developed on OSX, Linux or Windows the APIs can seem clunky an unfriendly because the world has improved many things since Symbian was first developed. However, if you use any RTOS or embedded OS from that time period they all have similar flaws due to the limitations of the devices at the time. Every developer I've ever worked with hates the OS they code on for any number of reasons. No platform is perfect. Having worked a little with Symbian I can say I saw the limitations of the OS and its APIs, but for the relatively narrow range of functions it's really asked to perform it's not bad.
I think that anyone who complains about the modern platform they're working in ought to be forced to code for six months in Fortran so they can learn to appreciate how much simpler it is to code to any platform created in the last 20 years!
My feelings? Do Gentoo if you want to; but do it sensibly.
Myself, I run Gentoo in a very small environment. However, I do it in a way that makes things stable, effective and reliable. Simply, my customer has a couple of big meaty servers that run VMware ESX. This provide the stable base. Then the actual work servers are each virtual machines in fault-tolerant instances. Each virtual server has only a small amount of RAM, disk space and resources and each runs a particular service or collection of related services (depending on SLA). Each work server is a Gentoo box.
In this way, if you need to do an upgrade on your email router (an hypothetical box that merely routes mail, not stores it) then you can do your "Gentoo magic" and upgrade it without affecting other services (such as HTTP, or file storage, or... you get the picture). As a bonus, before you start you can snapshot the server so that in the event of a borked upgrade you can roll back immediately and your customer's downtime is kept to an absolute minimum.
It seems to me this is a great way to do things. At the moment, said customer's ESX servers are around 380 days of uptime (last downtime was due to environmental issues, not server problems), and each of the virtual instances vary between the max 380 days of uptime and only a couple of weeks. At least one of them has had a rollback (the file server), but the files the customer used were actually on a SAN volume so they weren't part of the snapshot. Said rollback was because of a borked Samba installation, and time from identification of the problem to resolution was in the minutes. As soon as I realized it was going to take some work to fix, I pulled the trigger on the rollback and tried again during the next maintenance window (which succeeded by the way).
So long as you manage it correctly, why not use Gentoo? It's certainly the most likely to be secure since it can be as fat or slim as you like, and has all the latest security patches almost by default.
Did I not read (before this article was even posted to Slashdot) that this rumor had already been debunked by Cingular?
First, a disclaimer. This is an opinion. Don't read it as gospel, but instead try to research a little and come to your own conclusions.
Sorry, I just don't buy it. I've read about the death of Litvinenko, and I've done a little homework into this guy's history that seems interesting. I'm not going to delve too deeply in the details, but it seems to me that it's quite probable that this whole thing was a publicity stunt.
Yeah, a guy's dead. But this guy has a history of being violently opposed to the current Russian administration. His history shows him trying a number of times to discredit and/or destroy the Putin-controlled government. He was involved with a number of groups with the same goal, particularly in London.
Now, honestly if you were a member of the Russian government who wanted rid of a thorny problem, how would you do it? Kill the guy with a bullet through the head, or use a traceable, unusual and likely highly public method of killing someone? It seems to me that the FSB would have been quite capable of putting a bullet in Litvinenko's brain pan at any time and suddenly this thorny problem goes away. Besides, it seems from my reading that Litvinenko was no more or less of a problem to the Russian government than most of his other brothers in his societies and groups in England. To say that Litvinenko was such a problem to the government that they'd want to kill him at all is I think inflating his importance.
Now, if you as a group wanted to make a statement that would have worldwide coverage regarding the inhumanity of Putin's government, how better to do it than to have one of your own lay down his/her life in a particularly odd and highly newsworthy fashion? And if you can show that your martyr has been moving around because his movements are particularly traceable then you've just scored extra bonus points.
Litvinenko's death was painful, slow and highly newsworthy. The BBC was all over it... I know. I live in the US but I still enjoy the BBC podcasts every day on my way to work... it was all over the BBC world service for weeks. It seems awfully convenient that a guy who has been extremely vocal in his opposition to Putin's government would meet an end that so amply demonstrates precisely the message he and his colleagues were trying to convey (if it's true, of course). The media coverage also somewhat reeked of an orchestrated media blitz, it was just too perfect.
Now, as for where they got the polonium-210... well, after the fall of the Soviet Union much of the nuclear material that had existed within the country's borders was probably sold off around the world in order to support the orphaned communities who suddenly had very few ways of supporting themselves. It's not such a stretch to think that a sufficiently organized group with enough funding could find a sufficient quantity of polonium-210 on the black market to take the life of one of their own in a massive political statement.
Now, I'm still a little on the fence on this one. I'd say 60% chance that the above is what happened, but I still maintain a 40% possibility that what the media told us about the FSB poisoning Litvinenko was true. Perhaps it was to make a statement to all of those colleagues of Litvinenko that they need to quiet down... but it seems to me that a handful of bullets and a few key members of the groups getting lynched would be cheaper, quicker, cleaner and send the same message effectively. The whole polonium poisoning thing just seems overkill for a government, but seems like a perfect way for a radical group to send a message. It's just a more sophisticated suicide bomber.
As I stated above, this is an opinion. Don't take it as gospel.
Heh... OK... I concede that!
However, if an individual is actually dumb enough to believe that a million dollars in 24 hours actually could be channelled to their own account, then they deserve to be scammed. The simple fact is that the amount spent could be subscription fees, land sales / purchases... not to mention donations and so forth. Yes, you can theoretically carve yourself out a piece of that pie, but aren't you doing the exact same thing every time you play the lottery? Hell, every time you go to work you're doing that too.
Personally, I don't see that on the front page as a "draw" as such. I never did... I personally just find it an interesting point of trivia... kind of like the summaries my email server produces of "x number of emails in the last 24 hours, y Gb transferred, z spam mails identified" etc. If someone sees these numbers and thinks "All that money should be going into my pocket. I'll sign up right now and go take it!" then quite frankly they deserve everything they get from then on because they failed to adequately research the opportunities and risks.
I still think my main point stands, though; SL is no more of a pyramid scheme than Email, Usenet, IM, IRC, etc. It's a tool that yes, people can use to facilitate a pyramid scheme... but it is not in itself a pyramid scheme. At least not from my perspective.
It's not a game in the classical sense that there's a goal to be accomplished, scores and so forth... but it is nonetheless a game.
:) Plus I get kudos from friends who check out my store when I create a new piece... or comments (positive or negative) depending. I like that... it's communal. I don't expect to get rich from it... in fact I doubt I'll ever have to worry about withdrawing L$ from SL so I can't speak to how easy it is to withdraw.
I got into SL a few months back mostly out of curiosity. I didn't buy into the hype being generated by the media and checked it out because I was intrigued (as I have always been) at the concept of virtual realities. I was always a big fan of Gibson and the Cyberpunk novels in general and so I already had a "primer" in the thoughts behind virtual worlds.
Now, SL is not perfect. Not by a long shot. It's sometimes laggy, crash prone and buggy... but it IS enjoyable. I have friends I made through SL whom I probably would never have met in RL. I used to get on IRC a lot about a decade ago, and this provides similar interaction in my opinion. I enjoyed IRC because at the time I lived in East London, and getting on IRC provided me a way of meeting and communicating with people all over the world. Although now I've not logged into IRC in 7 or 8 years some of those same people are still my friends, and they were instrumental in helping me when I decided to move to the US 10 years ago. I don't predict I'm going to make another similar move, but SL provides me with the same sense of community I got back then.
Now, as far as the pyramid scheme thing goes... please! Take a look through secondlife.com (the official site). Although the idea of selling your creations or renting property is discussed, it's not plastered on the main page "Make Massive $$$$$$ Now" or something like that. Linden Labs for all their faults are selling SL as what it is; a virtual world, a community and a creativity tool. If you are creative enough and good enough with the built-in building tools, then you can sell your wares to others and make a little cash. I know some people who do this and make enough in-world L$ to "shop" occasionally. Sometimes they even make enough that they can "own" a small plot of land and have their monthly fees covered by their sales. I have never known anyone personally who makes a massive profit. In that regard, it's more like real-life... if you have a marketable skill (avatar building or building models of ships, houses, furniture etc.) and know how to market it properly you can make some in-world money. If not, you won't. It's that simple. There are no more huge opportunities to make "phat cash" in SL than there are in real life. The only advantage of SL is that it's still a relatively untapped market if you're creative enough.
Hell, I make some L$ in-world by creating real art. I draw, sometimes ink and paint... then I upload a texture and map it onto a simple prim with a nice frame... voila... one saleable item that people will buy to hang in their property. I don't make much, but I cover expenses... and I get to keep the original
The media has created the pyramid scheme, not SL... and certainly not the majority of the denizens of that virtual world. They're the ones selling the idea that you can get rich quick in SL... Linden I don't think has ever claimed that. Oh, and the SL "millionaires"? Have you seen the exchange rate of L$ to USD? An SL "millionaire" probably has as much in their "bank account" (read that as SL account) in real world $ as I do in my bank account. I am not rich... in fact there are months I juggle bills like everyone else. Plus, I have to note that there were probably more scams being thrown at me in IRC 10 years ago than I have seen in SL. It's just the media ignored IRC because it wasn't "cool" to be geeky back then. The same things have happened... they just have an extra coat of polish and eye-candy.