As someone who develops such sites for a living, I would suggest to keep things simple and just get the minimum hardware/hosting you can get by with. Time/money you spend trying to get your website scalable before it is necessary could be better spent getting and keeping paying customers. Once you have the demand, then you'll have a justification for 'moving to the cloud'.
Any kind of automatic cloud scalability is going to add substantial complexity and maintenance requirements. Unless a key selling feature of your service is scalability, I would not build for it in the beginning.
Use TortoiseSVN with beanstalkapp.com for version control, continuous integration, staging, etc. It is fantastically easy to use. You can set up an automatic deployment to a staging server on each commit, and then do manual deployments to your production server.
Another tip, you'll save on hosting costs if you go with a PHP/Linux/MySQL stack instead of Windows/ASP.NET/SQL. A single dedicated server at host like pair.com can probably host millions of hits on a carefully tuned application, and they throw in free/discounted hardware upgrades (with almost no downtime and no administrative work on your part) every few years. I could not be happier with their service.
Terrific job or white lie? The rover has lasted for 2 years, instead of 90 days. Therefore, someone made a highly inaccurate estimate at NASA. They are not supposed to make such big mistakes. Maybe they failed to realize that martian winds would clean the solar panels of dust, to keep the rover charged through the winter. Maybe NASA purposely set a conservative design lifetime as a PR move. Congress should conduct an investigation. What would happen if NASA made the same error in calculating the travel time for the human Mars mission? Oops.;)
I wrote my first business plan without ever looking for guidance on how to write a business plan. In hindsight, my plan turned out to be highly accurate. You basically need to think about your strategy, and write down whatever is relevant in complete sentences. Ask someone else to punch holes in it, and then go about collecting the missing information and performing the revisions. The only reason to read sample b-plans is to get the terminology for the headings. Samples and templates are not going to help you do the critical thinking that is required. On the other hand, doing as much reading as possible in your field helps a lot.
Right. Access is not a database, but only a front-end GUI program. What people call "Access" is actually the Jet Database Engine, which is implemented in a set of DLLs. It is similar to SQLite in that it is a file-oriented, rather than connection-oriented, database. Jet database files have a "mdb" extension.
Access can also act as a front-end to SQL Server databases, and has loads of import/export tools. Access (the GUI) is popular with me because makes it so easy to clean up and move data around between databases, text files, Excel files, etc. The Jet engine is free, and it is not a bad engine for everyday tasks involving a few users. The most severe restriction nowadays is the 4GB database size limitation and the fact that it is no longer supported by Microsoft. It will be replaced by SQL Server Express.
Oakland county, Michigan, the veritable center of the Detroit metropolitan area, recently started a project to blanket the whole county with free wireless Internet access.
L. Brooks Patterson, the Oakland county executive, is a very powerful man. Any media companies that try to block this project with anti-consumer laws will have to get by him first. The advantages of public internet access are so obvious. The more I hear about NMRC, the more they seem to be the devil incarnate.
I've been working on the same type of application for a number of years. Small doctor's offices don't have very complex requirements, so even plain old ASP or PHP will work. In fact, many of their functions could be handled by a generic portal application like Microsoft Sharepoint.
I think the database and OS choice are far more important than whether you use J2EE or ASP.Net. Licensing cost and restrictions are directly going to affect your bottom line when you go to resell the software. Stop thinking from a short-term developer's perspective and start thinking long-term and from the physician's perspective.
Have you looked at how complex Windows licensing is? Not only is it complex, but it is purposely ambigious so that people, being conservative, end up buying more than they need. Besides the drag of complexity, the standard Windows server licenses are limited to a certain number of users. The per-processor licensing costs are astronomical for a small business. Asking a doctor to keep track of how many users are using his application is another thing he/she would rather not be thinking about. Personally, restricting a machine whose hardware naturally can support thousands of users to a fixed number of users with hidden software settings I consider obscenely wasteful.
Unfortunately, the application I've been working on is all in ASP, and so barring an expensive migration, it is locked into Windows. If I were going to build an all new application, I would be foolish not to build it on all open-source and free software. I'm not too familiar with J2EE OS and database options, but the combination of PHP, Apache, Linux, and PostgreSQL seems to be a winner. And during your development if you can contribute back to those communities, you will get a warm fuzzy feeling.
Disclaimer: I'm partly your competitor, so take my advice with a grain of salt.
Such a network could be used to implement congestion pricing, where a device in your car automatically charges your debit card a toll when you drive on a particular roadway at a certain time of the day. Congestion tolling eliminates congestion from over-use completely and leads to more efficient planning, whereas the current solution of "build more roads" (USDOT(TM)) just leads to more congestion. You might particularly be interested in
this table from my thesis on how vehicular ad-hoc networking might play out over the next few decades.
Yes, you will get rich. If a $1000 investment yields $0.50 per day worth of electricity on average, then that results in $182.50 per year in revenue. Assuming no maintenance, land, installation, or other overhead costs, you are earning 18.25% yearly on your investment. It would be like printing money!
Actually, (26 miles) / (186,000 miles/sec) = 0.14 milliseconds. Theoretical latency is not the issue, it is practical latency. Since wireless bandwidth is shared, you have to add latency for the medium access control (MAC) protocol. Just today, my roommate's 802.11b would not connect because there were seven other access points in the neighborhood on the same channel. It only worked when we changed the channel. Point is, wireless gets saturated fast and gets slower with more users. Then add latency for the weather, which is unpredictable. If power is limited on the rig, then it won't have fast processors to handle the signal processing, adding more latency. All of these are on top of latency over land lines where the traffic is eventually routed.
Doesn't sound so good now does it. Maybe they can get high bandwidth to spots, but they will still have lots of latency. I predict generously in the 200-2000 ms range. Sure, with enough money, the barriers could be reduced, but then why not spend that money on fiber or other land line technologies? I think the niche market for this product (if it even works) will not be large enough to justify the development costs. I see red flags from this company and its parent company. It is selling for 13 cents a share. I would buy it for 1 cent per share and then divest its assets to a larger company with real products for 2 cents per share. But if they want to try it, more power to them and entertainment for us.
This is just another wireless pie in the sky idea to defraud unwitting investors. My parents once invested thousands of dollars in a company that was promising to run wireless from the rooftops of tall buildings in flat cities. The same promises were made, but the crooks running the outfit took the money and ran off. Then there's a laundry list of big name flops in this area, primarily Ricochet networks (wireless from lightpoles), Teledesic (wireless by LEO satellite) and Terabeam (wireless by laser). I cringe at the thought of all the gullible people who went out and bought their stock today on the hype alone...
The FAQ on their website talks about no substantive issues. One critical factor is the amount of power available to the transponders, and this is not mentioned at all. Someone on/. must be able to estimate the amount they can generate from a football-field-sized solar panel array, and compare it to how much power is needed. My guess is that it will be meager at best.
Another critical factor is latency. You are going to add 13 miles up and 13 miles down through clouds, rain, snow, sleet, and pollution. Wireless signals over 900 Mhz don't travel well through water, and can even be blocked by heavy tree foliage. So there goes 3G, unless you only want fair weather 3G. One thing is for sure, the latency is going to be worse than my cable modem, and it is going to have more periods of dead connection. Those who have had both satellite TV and cable TV will know what I'm talking about.
Latency is intolerable for the kind of high-bandwidth applications they are promising. Wherever you can get a wired connection, it would be preferred even it if it is a little more expensive. That leaves the potential market for "Stratellites" service to only those fringe situations where wired is unavailable. This is a far smaller market than the promises they imply in their so called "market research" page that talks about millions of Internet subscribers.
That should be, "One point twenty-one Jigawatts!, One point twenty-one Jigawatts!." -- Professor Emmett Brown, with his hands flying in the air. (just saw the movie again last night)
I was in India over the summer, and I visited one of my cousins who sells PCs from a small shop in Bangalore. Most people over there buy $200-$400 PCs, because that equates to 10,000 to 20,000 rupees. Farmers and laborers (75% of Indian population) make 50 rupees per day, so only the upper class city dwellers can afford PCs. Still, 25% of 1 billion is 250 million people. Would you pay $100-$200 for software on a $200-$400 PC? No. So free or pirated software rules in India, and will continue to do so for the forseeable future.
It's not reasonable for Ballmer to expect Indians (or others in the developing world) to pay $100 for a copy of XP, unless he can magically make the average Indian earn $40,000 per year rather than $3000. Also, keep in mind that in India, electricity costs more and a UPS is mandatory, so funds available to purchase hardware and software are less.
Even at $200-$400, hardware costs far outweigh labor costs in India. In the US, computers under $200 are not even worth the time to sell them or fix them, given that any qualified PC tech costs $60-$80/hour. So all the sub-$200 class PC components get junked.
This leads to an interesting business opportunity. If there was an efficient means of accumulating all the junk components, they could be shipped by sea container to India, where PC techs could sort out and re-sell the working parts. It costs about $4000 to ship a 20x10x10 ft. container to India from the US. So, you'd need to collect twenty $200 PCs or the equivalent to cover shipping costs. Since once the parts get to India, labor is almost free, the only other cost is gathering the components together in the US. A large corporation might have the means to do this cheaply, however. Maybe large corps should partner with Indian salvage companies to get rid of their old computers. They might make some money rather than paying to have them disposed, and also, Indians could get their $100 PCs for checking Hotmail.
C'mon people, be a little more skeptical. Can't you imagine that Jon Stewart is purposely stirring controversy to sell his book? Sure it's a risky and gutsy maneuver to call Tucker Carlson a dick on his own show, but Stewart's target audience loves just that kind of irreverence. Ask yourself this, did you really learn anything from the clip? I certainly didn't. If Stewart really has a bone to pick with Crossfire, he could have done it in private, and much more effectively too.
And as for people complaining about the dumbed down state of media and cable news, consider this. In other countries, you don't get 'dumb' shows, because the press only caters to the elite, educated, or people in power. In this country, we have both the elite shows, particularly on PBS and NPR, and the dumbed down versions on cable. Therefore, I think that our country is better because our media serves more people more effectively. If our country is really full of hypocritical people (and it is), then it is the most efficient state of the press that Fox News should be most popular. I think the more types of shows there are the better.
Despite the pessimists claims, our society is progressing from a less educated one to a more educated one. The variety of news shows catering to each audience can only help this process. There is a small cross-pollination effect at the margins where people are exposed to views outside their own. Eventually, I think people will slowly graduate to higher quality shows. I think in the long run, the media reflects the state of society rather than steers or influences it. The better it reflects society, the more we are fulfilling our democratic obligation to have a free press. The small, daily acts of educators and inquiring individuals are what really move the state of society towards progress.
I activated Half Life 2 for free with a coupon that came with an ATI All-In-Wonder Radeon 9600 Pro video card. At no time have I entered my CC information into Steam. Therefore, it's impossible for Valve to start automatically charging me for a hypothetical Steam subscription.
Suppose that I had purchased HL2, regardless of what's in the EULA, I find it hard to understand how could they charge me without my authorization. Did you know that a typical credit card charge-back fee paid by merchants is $60.00? If Valve decided to sneak in an automated charge, how many people do you think would issue charge backs. Do you really think Valve could afford this along with the accompanying negative publicity?
In 1999-2000, k-12 spending by the US was $373 billion. Billions more are spent on post-secondary education. Since local and state governments do not spend on national military, you can see that the DoE spending of $400 billion (2004) is probably less than the $400+ billion (2000) we as a nation spend on education.
Even this analysis is incomplete. My point is that if you have a fleeting grasp of the statistics, you can paint a misleading picture, as if the U.S. is a war-hungry country.
Slashdot posted a link to a pathetically incomplete news article, so it's not surprising to see all these incomplete responses. They don't even compare the price of wind to the price of conventional power at that school except to say it's more, and they don't mention that the price is subsidized.
Well, I used to work in a computer lab as one of the technicians. Periodically, we would bring each machine outside, take off the case, and clean them out with one of those vacuum cleaners that have an air-blower attachment. This doesn't cost anything except the time of the lab technician, which is usually fairly cheap (especially at a university;). Also, you only have to clean out the computers that need cleaning.
IMHO, getting a whole lab air filtration system is going to be overkill. To get to the point where you no longer have to do maintenance on the computers, you would need a very expensive air cleaner. You're running a lab, not a hospital. The hardware can take a lot of dust (a.k.a. neglect) before it fails.
My own computer case, which sits in my dusty bedroom, has a slot for a case-fan in the front, but the front panel is solid. So, I drilled the front panel with holes, and then placed a filter between the fan slot and the case panel. Then I added a fan to blow air into the case through the filter.
Where did I get the filter? I bought one of those 24"x20" home heater filters for 50 cents at the local hardware store. Since the filter is much larger than what I need, I cut out a small piece to fit in the case. I saved the rest of the filter. Periodically, I replace the old filter with a new piece cut from the saved filter.
It's very cheap, and it drastically cut down the amount of dust in my case. I still vacuum out the inside once in awhile, because fine dust still accumulates in it. But this maintenance is infrequent. Adding a case mod like this would save you a lot of maintenance work. I'm sure some other slashdotters know where to buy cheap air-filters for computer cases.
If only Jobs had not been so callous as to say:
``We have thought that when we have a little bit of spare time we will looking into taking it to Windows,'' he said, adding jokingly that he thought ``the experience probably won't be as good.''
I don't think anyone has mentioned power consumption of a hypothetical ram drive yet. So, let's calculate it. SDRAM sticks typically come with 4, 8 or 16 chips on them. The chips can be of varying size, i.e. 64, 128, or 256Mb. To be conservative, let's use the 256 Mb chips in our SSD. A typical PC133 32Mx8 chip from Hynix runs at 3.3V and uses 120 mA operating current (http://www.hynix.com/datasheet/pdf/dram/(1)HY57V5 6820HT.PDF Sorry to all the EE majors, I was CS and I'm using a best guess in selecting the operating current.) Therefore, the chip uses about 0.4 Watts of power to supply 32 Megabytes of memory.
If we want a gigabyte of RAM, then we are now using 12.8 Watts of power. If we want 10 Gigabytes of RAM, then we are using 128 Watts of power. Just for comparison, a typical hard drive uses about 20 Watts of power or less depending on what mode it's in.
If you wanted a battery backup for your SSD, then you'd need quite a bit of juice to maintain data on a large sized drives for extended periods > 2 hours.
If one were to use 1Gb chips, which I think are coming soon if they aren't out already, then our 10GB SSD would require 32 Watts of power, which is more reasonable. Of course, Gigabit chips would be more expensive too.
So maybe, in terms of power, price, and size, SSD's based on RAM are still a ways away (maybe about 3-5 years).
Another one bites the dust... Metricom is another ill-concieved, but well-intentioned idea that requires too much capital. I presented an idea for a peer-to-peer based network based on inexpensive networking devices installed in vehicles. (A MANET for those who know.) My thesis describes a compelling potential pathway for implementation of the network and argues that the network is feasible. You can read the abstract/full-text here:
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~humbads/thesis/
I think it is just and fair in our society if people pay for the right to enjoy the results of someone else's hard work and creativity. However, I think concentrating the control of distribution of content into the hands of a few private entities may result in them charging undue fees and placing undue restrictions on everyone else.
So, I would be against copyright controls that would result in such a system. Maybe the content industry should look at the software industry? Perhaps one could purchase a 'license' to a certain content, and then be permitted to use or own that content in any media format they wished? Another solution would be to put the copyright controlling mechanism into a government entity. But, the government is slow to change and generally mistrusted, so this may not work.
Another solution would be to have competing copyright controlling mechanisms, but such a system tends toward a natural monopoly, so that might not work either.
Thanks for helping me to clarify the issues a little better in my head.
I think that mass merchandised software will become open-source and free anyway. Updates will be generated as they are for linux and other open source projects, without the need for monetary incentives. However, there will always be the need for customized business software. This is what will keep software developers employed. (keeps me employed!)
I'm not saying that music that cannot be performed live is worthless. I'm saying that the _service_ provided by musicians will be what is paid for, rather than the _content_ that is produced. This service doesn't have to be a live performance. For example, if a theatre troupe wanted to score their musical, they would listen to a bunch of bands and hire the best band to write music. Then the musican would make his/her money, regardless of whether he/she is ugly, old, handicapped, etc.
The record companies make the argument that "because music distributon can be controlled, therefore the recorded music must have a value and must be paid for." I'm saying that that argument is bogus, and it is made apparent by the new technology. There's no god-given or natural-law reason for intellectual property to exist. It's an invention of the people in power.
Suppose I write a peice of software for a company, and they pay me for doing that work. Now, other people like the software and use copies of it. So, I should be paid again for each copy that is used? I think that's greedy and self-serving. The same is true if I write a piece of software for myself to use and other people use copies of it. Napster is a prime example.
I also wanted to make another point. Who stands to gain/lose by keeping intellectual property controlled? If it's controlled, the winners are the content distributors, who will take money from the pockets of people who actually wanted the services of the content producers. If it's not controlled, the winners are both the content producers and the consumers, because the middleman is cut out. Losers will be the content distributors, and the wildly popular content producers who sold enough copies of content to actually get rich in this twisted scheme. In short, the rich few will lose. Why else do you think armies of lawyers are fighting for controlling IP? Becuase it's good for the people, or good for the rich few?
It seems that there are two kinds of 'property', property that can be owned and property that cannot be owned. "Owning" means the ability to restrict others from using the property. Hence, things like bikes, land, cars, and other physical things can be 'owned'. However, things like the air we breath, light from the sun, or thoughts, cannot be 'owned' because there's no way to restrict others from using those things.
Bear with me, I have a point.
I think the fundamental shift that's going on here is that forms of media (sound, text, video) are moving from the class of things that can be 'owned' to the class of things that cannot be 'owned'. In other words, companies are no longer able to restrict people from using those items because they have become, in essence, non-physical. A long time ago, before recorded media, there was no concept of owning media because there was no media. Back then, people would enjoy an artists live performance. Since access to that _can_ be restricted, they would make money from it.
I think this is where we should go again, a system where the media is not ownable, but where the enjoyment of a performance is paid for. For example, the recordings of a concert would be free, but the right to be at the concert would be paid for. Another example: the software would be free to copy, but the service and support of the programmer would be paid for.
Notice that there is no longer a place for a middleman. However, there is room for people to provide services, such as promotion and ratings.
I like this argument, and I think that from now on, I will be against controls of IP and for free distribution of content. However, I will gladly pay a software provider for timely updates and tech support, or a musician to hear his performance, or theater to to view a movie screening. (The days of the plebeian actor earning million dollar fees will soon be over--back to normal again.)
Having UCAV's flying around overhead is reminicsent of the movie Terminator, where machines fly around overhead and kill people.
"more and more target assessment is likely to be done on-board in future, as the aircraft get more sophisticated." good thing we don't have computers that can grow at "geometric" rates yet, otherwise, we'd be tempted to relenquish control to the computers. maybe the movie wasn't so far off the mark? interesting....
Slashdot Mirror
As someone who develops such sites for a living, I would suggest to keep things simple and just get the minimum hardware/hosting you can get by with. Time/money you spend trying to get your website scalable before it is necessary could be better spent getting and keeping paying customers. Once you have the demand, then you'll have a justification for 'moving to the cloud'.
Any kind of automatic cloud scalability is going to add substantial complexity and maintenance requirements. Unless a key selling feature of your service is scalability, I would not build for it in the beginning.
Use TortoiseSVN with beanstalkapp.com for version control, continuous integration, staging, etc. It is fantastically easy to use. You can set up an automatic deployment to a staging server on each commit, and then do manual deployments to your production server.
Another tip, you'll save on hosting costs if you go with a PHP/Linux/MySQL stack instead of Windows/ASP.NET/SQL. A single dedicated server at host like pair.com can probably host millions of hits on a carefully tuned application, and they throw in free/discounted hardware upgrades (with almost no downtime and no administrative work on your part) every few years. I could not be happier with their service.
Terrific job or white lie? The rover has lasted for 2 years, instead of 90 days. Therefore, someone made a highly inaccurate estimate at NASA. They are not supposed to make such big mistakes. Maybe they failed to realize that martian winds would clean the solar panels of dust, to keep the rover charged through the winter. Maybe NASA purposely set a conservative design lifetime as a PR move. Congress should conduct an investigation. What would happen if NASA made the same error in calculating the travel time for the human Mars mission? Oops. ;)
When I first heard this news, I wanted Google to rip DOJ's idiotic request to shreds. Thankfully, they did just that in this case. The best part is:
"There is no showing of necessity because there is no explanation of the study itself or how a sampling of data proves any fact reliably."
Three cheers for Google! Hip hip! Hooray! Hip hip! Hooray! Hip hip! Hooray!
I wrote my first business plan without ever looking for guidance on how to write a business plan. In hindsight, my plan turned out to be highly accurate. You basically need to think about your strategy, and write down whatever is relevant in complete sentences. Ask someone else to punch holes in it, and then go about collecting the missing information and performing the revisions. The only reason to read sample b-plans is to get the terminology for the headings. Samples and templates are not going to help you do the critical thinking that is required. On the other hand, doing as much reading as possible in your field helps a lot.
> so-called "database"
Right. Access is not a database, but only a front-end GUI program. What people call "Access" is actually the Jet Database Engine, which is implemented in a set of DLLs. It is similar to SQLite in that it is a file-oriented, rather than connection-oriented, database. Jet database files have a "mdb" extension.
Access can also act as a front-end to SQL Server databases, and has loads of import/export tools. Access (the GUI) is popular with me because makes it so easy to clean up and move data around between databases, text files, Excel files, etc. The Jet engine is free, and it is not a bad engine for everyday tasks involving a few users. The most severe restriction nowadays is the 4GB database size limitation and the fact that it is no longer supported by Microsoft. It will be replaced by SQL Server Express.
Oakland county, Michigan, the veritable center of the Detroit metropolitan area, recently started a project to blanket the whole county with free wireless Internet access.
http://www.co.oakland.mi.us/wireless/
L. Brooks Patterson, the Oakland county executive, is a very powerful man. Any media companies that try to block this project with anti-consumer laws will have to get by him first. The advantages of public internet access are so obvious. The more I hear about NMRC, the more they seem to be the devil incarnate.
I've been working on the same type of application for a number of years. Small doctor's offices don't have very complex requirements, so even plain old ASP or PHP will work. In fact, many of their functions could be handled by a generic portal application like Microsoft Sharepoint.
I think the database and OS choice are far more important than whether you use J2EE or ASP.Net. Licensing cost and restrictions are directly going to affect your bottom line when you go to resell the software. Stop thinking from a short-term developer's perspective and start thinking long-term and from the physician's perspective.
Have you looked at how complex Windows licensing is? Not only is it complex, but it is purposely ambigious so that people, being conservative, end up buying more than they need. Besides the drag of complexity, the standard Windows server licenses are limited to a certain number of users. The per-processor licensing costs are astronomical for a small business. Asking a doctor to keep track of how many users are using his application is another thing he/she would rather not be thinking about. Personally, restricting a machine whose hardware naturally can support thousands of users to a fixed number of users with hidden software settings I consider obscenely wasteful.
Unfortunately, the application I've been working on is all in ASP, and so barring an expensive migration, it is locked into Windows. If I were going to build an all new application, I would be foolish not to build it on all open-source and free software. I'm not too familiar with J2EE OS and database options, but the combination of PHP, Apache, Linux, and PostgreSQL seems to be a winner. And during your development if you can contribute back to those communities, you will get a warm fuzzy feeling.
Disclaimer: I'm partly your competitor, so take my advice with a grain of salt.
Such a network could be used to implement congestion pricing, where a device in your car automatically charges your debit card a toll when you drive on a particular roadway at a certain time of the day. Congestion tolling eliminates congestion from over-use completely and leads to more efficient planning, whereas the current solution of "build more roads" (USDOT(TM)) just leads to more congestion. You might particularly be interested in this table from my thesis on how vehicular ad-hoc networking might play out over the next few decades.
Yes, you will get rich. If a $1000 investment yields $0.50 per day worth of electricity on average, then that results in $182.50 per year in revenue. Assuming no maintenance, land, installation, or other overhead costs, you are earning 18.25% yearly on your investment. It would be like printing money!
C/23 miles comes to about 8 milliseconds.
Actually, (26 miles) / (186,000 miles/sec) = 0.14 milliseconds. Theoretical latency is not the issue, it is practical latency. Since wireless bandwidth is shared, you have to add latency for the medium access control (MAC) protocol. Just today, my roommate's 802.11b would not connect because there were seven other access points in the neighborhood on the same channel. It only worked when we changed the channel. Point is, wireless gets saturated fast and gets slower with more users. Then add latency for the weather, which is unpredictable. If power is limited on the rig, then it won't have fast processors to handle the signal processing, adding more latency. All of these are on top of latency over land lines where the traffic is eventually routed.
Doesn't sound so good now does it. Maybe they can get high bandwidth to spots, but they will still have lots of latency. I predict generously in the 200-2000 ms range. Sure, with enough money, the barriers could be reduced, but then why not spend that money on fiber or other land line technologies? I think the niche market for this product (if it even works) will not be large enough to justify the development costs. I see red flags from this company and its parent company. It is selling for 13 cents a share. I would buy it for 1 cent per share and then divest its assets to a larger company with real products for 2 cents per share. But if they want to try it, more power to them and entertainment for us.
This is just another wireless pie in the sky idea to defraud unwitting investors. My parents once invested thousands of dollars in a company that was promising to run wireless from the rooftops of tall buildings in flat cities. The same promises were made, but the crooks running the outfit took the money and ran off. Then there's a laundry list of big name flops in this area, primarily Ricochet networks (wireless from lightpoles), Teledesic (wireless by LEO satellite) and Terabeam (wireless by laser). I cringe at the thought of all the gullible people who went out and bought their stock today on the hype alone.. .
/. must be able to estimate the amount they can generate from a football-field-sized solar panel array, and compare it to how much power is needed. My guess is that it will be meager at best.
The FAQ on their website talks about no substantive issues. One critical factor is the amount of power available to the transponders, and this is not mentioned at all. Someone on
Another critical factor is latency. You are going to add 13 miles up and 13 miles down through clouds, rain, snow, sleet, and pollution. Wireless signals over 900 Mhz don't travel well through water, and can even be blocked by heavy tree foliage. So there goes 3G, unless you only want fair weather 3G. One thing is for sure, the latency is going to be worse than my cable modem, and it is going to have more periods of dead connection. Those who have had both satellite TV and cable TV will know what I'm talking about.
Latency is intolerable for the kind of high-bandwidth applications they are promising. Wherever you can get a wired connection, it would be preferred even it if it is a little more expensive. That leaves the potential market for "Stratellites" service to only those fringe situations where wired is unavailable. This is a far smaller market than the promises they imply in their so called "market research" page that talks about millions of Internet subscribers.
I see more pitfalls than possibilities.
That should be, "One point twenty-one Jigawatts!, One point twenty-one Jigawatts!." -- Professor Emmett Brown, with his hands flying in the air. (just saw the movie again last night)
I was in India over the summer, and I visited one of my cousins who sells PCs from a small shop in Bangalore. Most people over there buy $200-$400 PCs, because that equates to 10,000 to 20,000 rupees. Farmers and laborers (75% of Indian population) make 50 rupees per day, so only the upper class city dwellers can afford PCs. Still, 25% of 1 billion is 250 million people. Would you pay $100-$200 for software on a $200-$400 PC? No. So free or pirated software rules in India, and will continue to do so for the forseeable future.
It's not reasonable for Ballmer to expect Indians (or others in the developing world) to pay $100 for a copy of XP, unless he can magically make the average Indian earn $40,000 per year rather than $3000. Also, keep in mind that in India, electricity costs more and a UPS is mandatory, so funds available to purchase hardware and software are less.
Even at $200-$400, hardware costs far outweigh labor costs in India. In the US, computers under $200 are not even worth the time to sell them or fix them, given that any qualified PC tech costs $60-$80/hour. So all the sub-$200 class PC components get junked.
This leads to an interesting business opportunity. If there was an efficient means of accumulating all the junk components, they could be shipped by sea container to India, where PC techs could sort out and re-sell the working parts. It costs about $4000 to ship a 20x10x10 ft. container to India from the US. So, you'd need to collect twenty $200 PCs or the equivalent to cover shipping costs. Since once the parts get to India, labor is almost free, the only other cost is gathering the components together in the US. A large corporation might have the means to do this cheaply, however. Maybe large corps should partner with Indian salvage companies to get rid of their old computers. They might make some money rather than paying to have them disposed, and also, Indians could get their $100 PCs for checking Hotmail.
C'mon people, be a little more skeptical. Can't you imagine that Jon Stewart is purposely stirring controversy to sell his book? Sure it's a risky and gutsy maneuver to call Tucker Carlson a dick on his own show, but Stewart's target audience loves just that kind of irreverence. Ask yourself this, did you really learn anything from the clip? I certainly didn't. If Stewart really has a bone to pick with Crossfire, he could have done it in private, and much more effectively too.
And as for people complaining about the dumbed down state of media and cable news, consider this. In other countries, you don't get 'dumb' shows, because the press only caters to the elite, educated, or people in power. In this country, we have both the elite shows, particularly on PBS and NPR, and the dumbed down versions on cable. Therefore, I think that our country is better because our media serves more people more effectively. If our country is really full of hypocritical people (and it is), then it is the most efficient state of the press that Fox News should be most popular. I think the more types of shows there are the better.
Despite the pessimists claims, our society is progressing from a less educated one to a more educated one. The variety of news shows catering to each audience can only help this process. There is a small cross-pollination effect at the margins where people are exposed to views outside their own. Eventually, I think people will slowly graduate to higher quality shows. I think in the long run, the media reflects the state of society rather than steers or influences it. The better it reflects society, the more we are fulfilling our democratic obligation to have a free press. The small, daily acts of educators and inquiring individuals are what really move the state of society towards progress.
I activated Half Life 2 for free with a coupon that came with an ATI All-In-Wonder Radeon 9600 Pro video card. At no time have I entered my CC information into Steam. Therefore, it's impossible for Valve to start automatically charging me for a hypothetical Steam subscription.
Suppose that I had purchased HL2, regardless of what's in the EULA, I find it hard to understand how could they charge me without my authorization. Did you know that a typical credit card charge-back fee paid by merchants is $60.00? If Valve decided to sneak in an automated charge, how many people do you think would issue charge backs. Do you really think Valve could afford this along with the accompanying negative publicity?
It is not correct to simply compare spending by the Feds in Education and Defense. You need to look at funding by all sources, state, local, and federal. http://www.policyalmanac.org/education/archive/doe _education_spending.shtml
In 1999-2000, k-12 spending by the US was $373 billion. Billions more are spent on post-secondary education. Since local and state governments do not spend on national military, you can see that the DoE spending of $400 billion (2004) is probably less than the $400+ billion (2000) we as a nation spend on education.
Even this analysis is incomplete. My point is that if you have a fleeting grasp of the statistics, you can paint a misleading picture, as if the U.S. is a war-hungry country.
Slashdot posted a link to a pathetically incomplete news article, so it's not surprising to see all these incomplete responses. They don't even compare the price of wind to the price of conventional power at that school except to say it's more, and they don't mention that the price is subsidized.
Well, I used to work in a computer lab as one of the technicians. Periodically, we would bring each machine outside, take off the case, and clean them out with one of those vacuum cleaners that have an air-blower attachment. This doesn't cost anything except the time of the lab technician, which is usually fairly cheap (especially at a university ;). Also, you only have to clean out the computers that need cleaning.
IMHO, getting a whole lab air filtration system is going to be overkill. To get to the point where you no longer have to do maintenance on the computers, you would need a very expensive air cleaner. You're running a lab, not a hospital. The hardware can take a lot of dust (a.k.a. neglect) before it fails.
My own computer case, which sits in my dusty bedroom, has a slot for a case-fan in the front, but the front panel is solid. So, I drilled the front panel with holes, and then placed a filter between the fan slot and the case panel. Then I added a fan to blow air into the case through the filter.
Where did I get the filter? I bought one of those 24"x20" home heater filters for 50 cents at the local hardware store. Since the filter is much larger than what I need, I cut out a small piece to fit in the case. I saved the rest of the filter. Periodically, I replace the old filter with a new piece cut from the saved filter.
It's very cheap, and it drastically cut down the amount of dust in my case. I still vacuum out the inside once in awhile, because fine dust still accumulates in it. But this maintenance is infrequent. Adding a case mod like this would save you a lot of maintenance work. I'm sure some other slashdotters know where to buy cheap air-filters for computer cases.
Good luck!
Shailesh
evolution:
floppy disk -> Zip Disk -> iPod
If only Jobs had not been so callous as to say:
``We have thought that when we have a little bit of spare time we will looking into taking it to Windows,'' he said, adding jokingly that he thought ``the experience probably won't be as good.''
S.
I don't think anyone has mentioned power consumption of a hypothetical ram drive yet. So, let's calculate it. SDRAM sticks typically come with 4, 8 or 16 chips on them. The chips can be of varying size, i.e. 64, 128, or 256Mb. To be conservative, let's use the 256 Mb chips in our SSD. A typical PC133 32Mx8 chip from Hynix runs at 3.3V and uses 120 mA operating current (http://www.hynix.com/datasheet/pdf/dram/(1)HY57V5 6820HT.PDF Sorry to all the EE majors, I was CS and I'm using a best guess in selecting the operating current.) Therefore, the chip uses about 0.4 Watts of power to supply 32 Megabytes of memory.
If we want a gigabyte of RAM, then we are now using 12.8 Watts of power. If we want 10 Gigabytes of RAM, then we are using 128 Watts of power. Just for comparison, a typical hard drive uses about 20 Watts of power or less depending on what mode it's in.
If you wanted a battery backup for your SSD, then you'd need quite a bit of juice to maintain data on a large sized drives for extended periods > 2 hours.
If one were to use 1Gb chips, which I think are coming soon if they aren't out already, then our 10GB SSD would require 32 Watts of power, which is more reasonable. Of course, Gigabit chips would be more expensive too.
So maybe, in terms of power, price, and size, SSD's based on RAM are still a ways away (maybe about 3-5 years).
S.
Another one bites the dust... Metricom is another ill-concieved, but well-intentioned idea that requires too much capital. I presented an idea for a peer-to-peer based network based on inexpensive networking devices installed in vehicles. (A MANET for those who know.) My thesis describes a compelling potential pathway for implementation of the network and argues that the network is feasible. You can read the abstract/full-text here: http://www-personal.umich.edu/~humbads/thesis/
Could everyone bring a Playstation 2 instead?
So, I would be against copyright controls that would result in such a system. Maybe the content industry should look at the software industry? Perhaps one could purchase a 'license' to a certain content, and then be permitted to use or own that content in any media format they wished? Another solution would be to put the copyright controlling mechanism into a government entity. But, the government is slow to change and generally mistrusted, so this may not work. Another solution would be to have competing copyright controlling mechanisms, but such a system tends toward a natural monopoly, so that might not work either.
Thanks for helping me to clarify the issues a little better in my head.
Shailesh
I'm not saying that music that cannot be performed live is worthless. I'm saying that the _service_ provided by musicians will be what is paid for, rather than the _content_ that is produced. This service doesn't have to be a live performance. For example, if a theatre troupe wanted to score their musical, they would listen to a bunch of bands and hire the best band to write music. Then the musican would make his/her money, regardless of whether he/she is ugly, old, handicapped, etc.
The record companies make the argument that "because music distributon can be controlled, therefore the recorded music must have a value and must be paid for." I'm saying that that argument is bogus, and it is made apparent by the new technology. There's no god-given or natural-law reason for intellectual property to exist. It's an invention of the people in power.
Suppose I write a peice of software for a company, and they pay me for doing that work. Now, other people like the software and use copies of it. So, I should be paid again for each copy that is used? I think that's greedy and self-serving. The same is true if I write a piece of software for myself to use and other people use copies of it. Napster is a prime example.
I also wanted to make another point. Who stands to gain/lose by keeping intellectual property controlled? If it's controlled, the winners are the content distributors, who will take money from the pockets of people who actually wanted the services of the content producers. If it's not controlled, the winners are both the content producers and the consumers, because the middleman is cut out. Losers will be the content distributors, and the wildly popular content producers who sold enough copies of content to actually get rich in this twisted scheme. In short, the rich few will lose. Why else do you think armies of lawyers are fighting for controlling IP? Becuase it's good for the people, or good for the rich few?
Bear with me, I have a point.
I think the fundamental shift that's going on here is that forms of media (sound, text, video) are moving from the class of things that can be 'owned' to the class of things that cannot be 'owned'. In other words, companies are no longer able to restrict people from using those items because they have become, in essence, non-physical. A long time ago, before recorded media, there was no concept of owning media because there was no media. Back then, people would enjoy an artists live performance. Since access to that _can_ be restricted, they would make money from it.
I think this is where we should go again, a system where the media is not ownable, but where the enjoyment of a performance is paid for. For example, the recordings of a concert would be free, but the right to be at the concert would be paid for. Another example: the software would be free to copy, but the service and support of the programmer would be paid for.
Notice that there is no longer a place for a middleman. However, there is room for people to provide services, such as promotion and ratings.
I like this argument, and I think that from now on, I will be against controls of IP and for free distribution of content. However, I will gladly pay a software provider for timely updates and tech support, or a musician to hear his performance, or theater to to view a movie screening. (The days of the plebeian actor earning million dollar fees will soon be over--back to normal again.)
Shailesh
Having UCAV's flying around overhead is reminicsent of the movie Terminator, where machines fly around overhead and kill people. "more and more target assessment is likely to be done on-board in future, as the aircraft get more sophisticated." good thing we don't have computers that can grow at "geometric" rates yet, otherwise, we'd be tempted to relenquish control to the computers. maybe the movie wasn't so far off the mark? interesting....