Technology for this has been developed. (as Dave Barry would say, "I am not making this up.") Check out this article from the Gas Technology Institute.
Nor.Web did a field demo with a major SOUTHERN US utility and it worked great 'til the HV breached the isolation on their HV to LV bypass device and the device blew up. There were also strong allogations (which Nor.Web denied) that there were interference issues with their technology already operating in Europe. (The infamous broadcasting lamposts.) The reason they cited in their shutdown was that they couldn't make the business case work (esp in US) no matter how many times they did the math. Subsequently their IP was shopped around to a bunch of folks, but I can't remember if it was snapped up and incorporated into anyone else's technology.
People are still trying though.. The aforementioned Current Technologies and Amperion are trying to develop a viable product for the US. The distribution transformer is still the killer.
More information on the power line broadband space can be found at the United Power Line Council.
Oh, BTW.. There was a story on/. a few months back on Luke Stewart and Media Fusion. Apparently, they have mended their fences and Stewart is back peddling his mumbo-jumbo, too-hard-for-anyone-but-Luke-to-understand technology known as "Advanced Subcarrier Modulation [ASCM] (TM)."
I looked through some of the links that google returned and I was happy to find a few places that will "process" your monitor. However, what concerns me is that none of them outlined how they "process" your monitor. How can I be sure that "process" isn't a euphemism for "pack into a shipping container headed for China?" Anyone know of a link to a place that would definitely handle the hazardous waste in a proper manner? Or would you have to telephone/email some of these outfits and interrogate them to make sure?
Any college that creates new degree programs will, until someone graduates from them, have unaccredited programs. It's not that big of a deal. Yes, this is something of a disadvantage if you are looking to transfer, and it is something explained to all applicants. It isn't that your credits definitely won't transfer, just that the college to which you transfer is less likely to accept them.
Just try getting registered as a Professional Engineer without graduating from an ABET accredited program. (I assume since these students are in an engineering program at least some percentage of them will want to take the FE exam and eventually become licensed as engineers...) It's not impossible but it causes you to have to jump through more hoops. Most state engineering licensing boards do consider accreditation a big deal.
I may be totally off base, but I don't think the reason the entertainment industry is fighting digital technology is because they are worried about Joe Consumer copying CDs and giving them to friends. People have been making copies of stuff for the last 20-30 years, and while the Internet may facilitate the process some, I don't think it greatly increases the damage on individual consumer can inflict on the entertainment industry. When I was in high school and college 15 years ago, people copied records (remeber those?) and CDs all the time..it's something those who are perpetually low on cash do. The Internet extends an individual's reach to some degree, but how many people can I email my CDs to anyway? Widescale distribution through things like Kazaa can be abusive, but those people could be caught and dealt with accordingly. With extreme DRM technolgy measures, the ones who are seriously trying to stick it to the industry through piracy will find ways to circumvent the technology and Joe Consumer will be left paying over and over for what costs him once today.
The real threat that the entertainment industry is trying to fight off is the independent music artist or film maker. The Internet has the potential to completely bypass the people who control the entertainment industry today and they don't like it. If they lose control over how digital works are distributed, they lose their cut and they whither and die. They are hiding behind the facade of "piracy" to protect their franchise. If the draconian DRM measures take hold, you'll wake up to find one day that even distributing your own works will be defined as "piracy" since the entertainment industry hasn't sanctioned said distribution.
Yeah right... If I hire someone, I certainly don't want anyone working for me who is a sought-after, recognized professional in his/her field. After all, the only way people get job offers is when they actively seek them out.
Seriously, if you're really good at what you do, your employer had better be worried that someone else will hear about you and snap you up. Sharing an unsolicited job offer that you receive with your boss might just wake him/her up. If you feel doing so would alienate you from your boss, maybe you already don't get the respect you deserve.
I would love to buy things in online auctions - except that invariably, some obsessive-compulsive type halfway across the continent is willing to bid half their net worth for whatever it is I'm looking for.
This is something I noticed long before eBay... Once upon a time I would attend (real world) auctions and I noticed that quite often people would get so caught up in the frenzy of bidding that they would bid well beyond what something was worth. A few auctions were so bad that the bulk of the people in the room would be laughing (loudly!) at the 2-3 idoits in the room who just couldn't let something go... I think this is the prime motivation for folks to hold an auction instead of just placing it up for sale some other way. Furthermore, opening up the bidding audience to a nationwide set of bidders only increases the chances that there will be an obsessive-compulsive type bidding against you... Even better for the seller!
With that in mind, I think the Internet has affected "real world" sales in two distinct ways... eBay has made it incredibly easy for folks to auction something. Before you had to have a decent amount of stuff and hire an auctioneer, now all you need is a digital camera and a credit card. In cases where a seller has not gone the eBay route, the mere fact something can be sold to a wider audience will raise the value of that item. If I sell a relatively obscure book in a real world shop, chances are pretty low that someone will come in and buy it. But if I can open my audience up to a larger group of folks looking for that book, the value rises. (Higher demand, fixed supply -> price goes up.)
1) It's a fact of life that no matter how good you are at what you do, some folks will require you to have that piece of paper. Having a degree will almost certainly provide you more opportunities than not having a degree. Today it may seem you have "enough" opportunities at your feet, but you never know what the future holds.
2) CompSci and EE are not your only options if System Administration is what seems to interest you. Consider a good "Computer Technology" program that not only teaches how to write shell scripts, configure, servers, etc., but also emphasizes a systematic approach to the "big picture." i.e. One that covers things like meeting business requirements and building integrated systems. The world needs EEs and CompSci folks to design specific hardware and software solutions, but it also needs people who can take diverse systems and make them work together. My alma mater Purdue has a fine Computer Technology program and I'm sure there are many others.
3) College is about more than learning a specific skill set. It's also about learning more about life and interacting with others. It's about meeting people with diverse backgrounds. Some people don't need or are not suited to college, but for others it provides a good transition from living with parents (and siblings) to the real world.
4) Some of the most technically knowledgeable and adept people I know come from military backgrounds. Not having been in the military myself, I can't speak about all the pluses and minuses, but it appears that the military does provide lots of opportunity for folks. Certainly the fact one may end up in a military conflict is a big minus, but at the same time they seem pretty good at taking care of themselves. Might be an option worth looking into...
5) Some of the best stepping stones into a career are the student employment opportunities that exist at larger universities. In many cases they provide valuable experience in leading-edge research or technology environments. The student consulting and programming jobs I had in college were the number one reason I was hired into my first full time job out of college. I haven't slowed down since then...
6) If you go to college, don't just focus on computers. Take a history class, learn a little about music... When you get older you'll appreciate having at least been exposed to subjects outside your prime area of focus.
the Cringeley article points out that this could be used to solve the last-mile problem.
Sounds more like UWB will only solve the "last 10 meter" problem. Seriously, I have yet to understand how this technology will be feasible for communications over any appreciable distance. In order to use UWB for distances over say, 100 meters, you need to do one of two things. 1) Add a large umber of repeaters to regenerate the signal and bounce it from hop to hop (a la Metricom) or 2) raise the power. Either of these approaches will result in a significantly higher noise floor. In turn, no one will be able to hear each other over the cacophony of transmissions. TANSTAAFL folks. UWB is Cold Fusion of the 00s.
I don't know the specific's of Dave's situation, but in many cases the amateur radio operator is operating with the FCC regulations. Consumer devices are not protected from harmful interference from other devices and most consumer radio products have a sticker right on them that say so. Problem is most consumers buy poorly designed products and then hold the ham responsibilty for interference when it's really the manufacturer of their device who's at fault. But it's easier to put pressure on 'the radio nut' down the street rather than complain to the manufacturer of the poorly shielded product that already cost them $250.
As for cable, if the amatueur radio operator is getting into CATV, that means CATV is leaking and possibly interfering with other radio systems like public safety two-way and aircraft radio systems. The cable company should clean up their system or risk running afoul of the FCC. A properly operated CATV system will not suffer ingress from an amateur radio operator.
Telephone interference is in the same vein; if the ham's signal is getting into the phone network (as opposed to the neighbors' $9.95 phones) the telephone company is responsible for cleaning their plant up. However, chances are that the telephones themselves (even wireline) aren't properly shielded...
Broadcast interference *may* be the responsibility of the ham to clean up, but again without knowing the specifics, it's hard to tell. Part of the problem may be that the ham is using ungodly amount of power when low power would do. Maybe if the ham turned down the power things would get cleaned up. Who knows? Has anyone tried working with the guy instead of just trying to make him go away?
A lot of folks would rather not work with the ham to understand what interference modes are present. Chances are they complain about interference but really have a problem with the huge monstrosity of an antenna in the back yard. It's not uncommon for neighbors of a ham with one of these huge antennas to be suffering all sorts of interference problems even when the ham is not operating. There are two sides to every story.
I think a distinction needs to be made between orphaned software and abandonware.
Software that gets orphaned by a company that goes out of business most likely is not obsolete and its release to the public could have damaging effects on competitors. However, if that's the case, it's the job of the bankruptcy judge, trustee, or whoever is shutting down the company to recognize that software still has value. If the software is still so competitive it could put someone else out of business, chances are someone will want to buy that software. And that value should be returned to creditors or shareholders of the defunct company that otherwise would receive nothing.
Abandonware on the other hand, is software that its "parent" deems obsolete and of little or no value anymore. There are a lot of other programmers (both hobbiest and professional) that could take advantage of recycling "useless" code. O'Reilly's example of a user wanting to share "obsolete" software for a niche application is something I have experienced myself and it is frustrating. I say encourage companies to release their abandonware to the public.
In either case however, the decision should be voluntary, and in the case of bankruptcy, with input from all interested parties.
I can understand why companies (especially the big guys) are reluctant to share abandonware. The support issue really never goes away. In some cases there might be some lingering IP that you carried through to your current products that your competitors still don't have, and you might not even know it. I think a lot of companies hold onto abandonware because they don't want to unknowingly form the basis for someone else's business or worse yet, aid their competitors.
It's possible that 500 kbps on a 32 Mbps link was ftp's and TCP's fault. Most TCP implementations in use today have default window sizes that will severely limit your throughput. And if the TCP implementation doesn't support the large window size option the max your TCP window can be is 64K. TCP Window size is the amount of data that can be sent before TCP needs to wait for an ACK. So if your window is 64K, you send 64K and wait for the ACK, send 64K and wait for the ACK, etc. This isn't really a problem over short, relatively slow links, but on any network where there is a large bandwidth*delay product this will be a problem because the link ends up idle for a good amount of time.
For example, lets look at a situation where I need to tranfer data from the east coast to the west coast and my round trip time is 70 ms. If I have a 32 Mbps link, I can send 64K in about 2 ms. So I have to wait 68 ms until I send another 64K. This gives an effective throughput of less than 1 Mbps. Throw in the slightest amount of congestion and things go even further downhill real fast.
This is a well know problem that has been addressed. Special implenetations of ftp clients and servers are available free (as in beer) to take advatage of large TCP windows. It sounds like these guys are trying to use this phenomena to sell their new compression algorithm.
And by the way, I don't buy their spin about getting "data from one place to another without actually transmitting the data." This is applying compression directly at the communications channel pure and simple. This is analogous to a (hypothetical) ftp client that gzips everything before it is put on the wire and sends it to an ftp server that automatically gunips it at the other end....
There is at least one somewhat plausible explanation for why some hidden networks are sucking up valuable address space from the global connected Internet.
There are what I would call "confederations" of sites and networks which maintain connectivity through private networks, most likely research-community and government oriented. e.g. Abilene(Internet2), CA*Net, APAN, ESnet, etc. The members of these confederations may be different research labs, universities, etc which have need for complex routing policies based on endpoint and which private network to take. Unfortunately, the tools for implementing such policy are weak and often fall back on making decisions based on IP address. This in turn means that certain IP addresses are used to cause traffic to flow in a certain way and must be blocked to the public Internet.
Now with all of that said, one would naturally assume this could be accomplished with RFC 1918 (private) address space and shouldn't require using up valuable public address space. This is true if there was only one confederation, but many of these semi-private groups exist and many of the individual organizations participate in multiple confederations simultaneously. This means if RFC1918 address space were used for each confederation, someone would need to be responsible to make sure no conflicts existed in the variuous private address spaces. This would be problematic becuase 1) the confederations generally don't cooperate with each other (not in an antagonistic sense, more like ships-in-the-night) and 2) this would take take up someone's time which even in the research community is genereally not free (as in beer). Some confederations don't even know others exist. Furthermore, even if such a project were undertaken, all of the participants would need to agree on a common chunk of the RFC1918 space. This would be hard to do as many organizations probably have already used varying parts of this space for their own purposes. (again, none of which were coordinated.) Some people would not be happy about having to renumber.
So in order to maintain unique address space amongst this web of semi-private networks, the particpants simply use additional addresses out of the global Internet address space but only announce it amongst themselves. i.e. The global Internet registry is used to also coordinate use of addresses across these multiple, private interconnections of (usually) public institutions.
Now, I don't think this is the main cause of hidden address space. In fact it's probably so small compared to other causes that it is probably not necessary to address at this point.
However, I wanted to offer it up as a legitimate reason some parts of the global Internet are not reachable from commodity ISPs.
Sorry, this is getting way OT, but I can't bite my tongue on this one. CapNPeet, your post makes no sense. Sony did not develop VHS, JVC did. Sony developed Beta.
What made VHS take off was that JVC licensed VHS to anyone who wanted to make VCRs for little or no licensing fee while Sony charged manufacturers a fortune to license Beta technology. Sony ended up only licensing Beta to two or three consumer electonics manufacturers while JVC licensed to everyone else. The ensuing competition drove VHS prices down and everybody bought VHS VCRs.
IMHO, the VHS/Beta analogy doesn't apply to Microsoft. Apple played the role of Sony by retaining tight control of their hardware, while IBM played JVC by essentially giving their technology away so everybody and their brother cranked out PC clones. M$ was at the right place at the right time.
...But people have been conditioned to accept software bugs and security holes as the norm. People's expectations of software (whether on their own PC or on an Internet server somewhere) is so low that MS can get away with crap like this. What low expectations don't cover, the EULA will. If a negligence suit ever saw trial, I bet the jury would be hit over the head with the "IN NO EVENT SHALL MICROSOFT AND/OR ITS SUPPLIERS BE LIABLE FOR...ANY DAMAGES WHATSOEVER..." language from the EULA. After all, the users agreed to live with this level of service. If Ford and Firestone only had a EULA to cover their problem...
Apparently some folks see pr0n as the application for 3G...
I agree that the applications that are needed to drive 3G just aren't there. Video phones are the first app that everyone talks about, but a lot of companies (going all the way back to Ma Bell in the early '70s) have lost buckets of money thinking people have the strong desire to see each other when they talk on the phone.
I may be stating the obvious, but the overhyping of technology is nothing new in the wireless arena. I can remember how PCS was going to revolutionize wireless communications and put cellular to shame. The few minor bells and whistles that PCS eventually did bring (paging and SMS) were incremental at best and were quickly adopted by the cellular folks. Today you can't tell the difference between the two...
If you've ever soldered on heavy copper you've probably felt the pain of soldering one land only to desolder one nearby...
What's even worse is trying to solder a heavy gauge copper conductor. (e.g. AWG No. 6) You can't get the solder to flow because the copper transmits all of the heat right out of the iron and away from what you're trying to solder... You practically need a propane torch to get it right... This is why electricians rely on heavy duty compression lugs instead of trying to solder. For really heavy duty connections (like grounding and bonding with AWG 4/0), exothermic welding (similar to thermite) is used to generate enough heat to make a good connection. (OK, slightly OT, but it illustrates how well copper transmits heat...)
Oh man, what are all of CCC's classic rock stations going to do when they do their countdown of the greatest rock songs of all time? They won't be able to play the number one song!!!!!
I find it ironic that anyone with an Internet connection can anonymously find out where I live, my telephone number, the size of my house and how much I paid for it, whether or not I received a speeding ticket, etc. but I can't read the NY Times article without getting a ^@$#*!* username and password. (OK, you can register a fake name, but that's more than what you have to do to check up on me.)
Public information should be public, but I don't think completely unfettered access is necessarily good either. On the other hand, if specific checks and balances are put in place to protect those who have information in public databases, they can be used as roadblocks by those who have something to hide.
I have no idea how you strike a balance between the two. Perhaps the traditional method of going down to the courthouse is not too far off the mark.
As an engineer, I'm dissapointed they haven't released a similar study on the exponential constant, e. After all, e is probably even more fascinating since e^(j*pi)= -1
MCI thought they would do some recyling of their own about 10 years ago. They bought a company called Access Transmission Service which owned all of Western Union's conduit in urban locations. (I don't know if ATS was a spinoff of WU or if they bought the conduit in the great WU sell-off in the late 80s...) This conduit was located in something like 17 major downtown areas. On paper the deal looked perfect for MCI. It was a chance to jump on the Metro Access market that MFS, Teleport, and others were building. However, as the story was related to me, once the deal was done, MCI discovered they bought an aged, crumbling conduit system that would need a huge investment to rehabilitate. Some of the conduit was usable, but much was made out of wood and caving in. What wasn't caving in was filled with old retired cable that may or may not be able to be pulled out in one piece. WU was almost always strapped for cash, so much of the conduit was never properly maintained. Can pnumatic tubes that have seen no maintenance in the last 75-100 years be in any sort of usable shape?
Granted, in some cities the ATS right-of-way alone was valuable, but utilizing it required a great deal more than pulling new cable through existing conduit. In many large cities you can still find WU manholes right next to the Bell manholes, but I haven't heard of any cities where the WU conduit has been used extensively. Has anyone else?
Bob Pease writes the best practical-oriented engineering columns around. Over the
years he's done a lot to debunk Taguchi and Fuzzy
Logic theories as fancy bs. (His series on how
analog control systems can do as well or better
than "Fuzzy Logic" was excellent.)
Pease's articles do an excellent job of describing
the real world and cutting through the scientist
and theoretician rhetoric. If you've never read
his column in Electronic Design, check out the
archive at http://www.planetee.com/planetee/servlet/DisplayDo cument?ArticleID=8141. I highly recommend reading his work.
Now that I have an almost two-year-old son, I have pondered the same question. I really worry about the quality of education in both terms of the drive for political correctness and the need to "teach to the test." However, I really think my son needs to be exposed to the social workings of elementary, middle, and high school. He'll need to know how to deal with others the rest of his life and to shelter him until he goes off to college is not the way to teach him.
Did I like not being one of the more popular kids in school? No. Did I like dealing with the (luckily few) teachers who didn't treat me in the most fair manner? No. But being in certain situations that may have been less than desirable gave me valuable experiences in life that give me the confidence to be the person I am today.
These types of incidents, whether they be school-sponsored censorship or peer-generated angst, are of little significance. What is important is what we take away from the experiences. I feel my job as a parent will to give my son the same support my parents gave me throughout my childhood and young adulthood, not try to eliminate obsticles. That way when he becomes a man, he will be able to deal with crap appropriately and get what he wants out of life.
The girl in the science fair story learned an extremely valuable lesson about the world in which we live. I'm sorry she had to learn it at such a young age. Hopefully her parents will teach her to not be discouraged, to press on, and continue to adjust her course so she can continue to persue her interests and express her views.
"
Oh, my friend, it's not what they take away from you that counts. It's what you do with what you have left." --Hubert Humphrey
Slashdot Mirror
Technology for this has been developed. (as Dave Barry would say, "I am not making this up.") Check out this article from the Gas Technology Institute.
--z
People are still trying though.. The aforementioned Current Technologies and Amperion are trying to develop a viable product for the US. The distribution transformer is still the killer. More information on the power line broadband space can be found at the United Power Line Council.
Oh, BTW.. There was a story on /. a few months back on Luke Stewart and Media Fusion. Apparently, they have mended their fences and Stewart is back peddling his mumbo-jumbo, too-hard-for-anyone-but-Luke-to-understand technology known as "Advanced Subcarrier Modulation [ASCM] (TM)."
--z
--z
Just try getting registered as a Professional Engineer without graduating from an ABET accredited program. (I assume since these students are in an engineering program at least some percentage of them will want to take the FE exam and eventually become licensed as engineers...) It's not impossible but it causes you to have to jump through more hoops. Most state engineering licensing boards do consider accreditation a big deal.
--z
I may be totally off base, but I don't think the reason the entertainment industry is fighting digital technology is because they are worried about Joe Consumer copying CDs and giving them to friends. People have been making copies of stuff for the last 20-30 years, and while the Internet may facilitate the process some, I don't think it greatly increases the damage on individual consumer can inflict on the entertainment industry. When I was in high school and college 15 years ago, people copied records (remeber those?) and CDs all the time..it's something those who are perpetually low on cash do. The Internet extends an individual's reach to some degree, but how many people can I email my CDs to anyway? Widescale distribution through things like Kazaa can be abusive, but those people could be caught and dealt with accordingly. With extreme DRM technolgy measures, the ones who are seriously trying to stick it to the industry through piracy will find ways to circumvent the technology and Joe Consumer will be left paying over and over for what costs him once today.
The real threat that the entertainment industry is trying to fight off is the independent music artist or film maker. The Internet has the potential to completely bypass the people who control the entertainment industry today and they don't like it. If they lose control over how digital works are distributed, they lose their cut and they whither and die. They are hiding behind the facade of "piracy" to protect their franchise. If the draconian DRM measures take hold, you'll wake up to find one day that even distributing your own works will be defined as "piracy" since the entertainment industry hasn't sanctioned said distribution.
--z
Seriously, if you're really good at what you do, your employer had better be worried that someone else will hear about you and snap you up. Sharing an unsolicited job offer that you receive with your boss might just wake him/her up. If you feel doing so would alienate you from your boss, maybe you already don't get the respect you deserve.
--z
This is something I noticed long before eBay... Once upon a time I would attend (real world) auctions and I noticed that quite often people would get so caught up in the frenzy of bidding that they would bid well beyond what something was worth. A few auctions were so bad that the bulk of the people in the room would be laughing (loudly!) at the 2-3 idoits in the room who just couldn't let something go... I think this is the prime motivation for folks to hold an auction instead of just placing it up for sale some other way. Furthermore, opening up the bidding audience to a nationwide set of bidders only increases the chances that there will be an obsessive-compulsive type bidding against you... Even better for the seller!
With that in mind, I think the Internet has affected "real world" sales in two distinct ways... eBay has made it incredibly easy for folks to auction something. Before you had to have a decent amount of stuff and hire an auctioneer, now all you need is a digital camera and a credit card. In cases where a seller has not gone the eBay route, the mere fact something can be sold to a wider audience will raise the value of that item. If I sell a relatively obscure book in a real world shop, chances are pretty low that someone will come in and buy it. But if I can open my audience up to a larger group of folks looking for that book, the value rises. (Higher demand, fixed supply -> price goes up.)
-z
1) It's a fact of life that no matter how good you are at what you do, some folks will require you to have that piece of paper. Having a degree will almost certainly provide you more opportunities than not having a degree. Today it may seem you have "enough" opportunities at your feet, but you never know what the future holds.
2) CompSci and EE are not your only options if System Administration is what seems to interest you. Consider a good "Computer Technology" program that not only teaches how to write shell scripts, configure, servers, etc., but also emphasizes a systematic approach to the "big picture." i.e. One that covers things like meeting business requirements and building integrated systems. The world needs EEs and CompSci folks to design specific hardware and software solutions, but it also needs people who can take diverse systems and make them work together. My alma mater Purdue has a fine Computer Technology program and I'm sure there are many others.
3) College is about more than learning a specific skill set. It's also about learning more about life and interacting with others. It's about meeting people with diverse backgrounds. Some people don't need or are not suited to college, but for others it provides a good transition from living with parents (and siblings) to the real world.
4) Some of the most technically knowledgeable and adept people I know come from military backgrounds. Not having been in the military myself, I can't speak about all the pluses and minuses, but it appears that the military does provide lots of opportunity for folks. Certainly the fact one may end up in a military conflict is a big minus, but at the same time they seem pretty good at taking care of themselves. Might be an option worth looking into...
5) Some of the best stepping stones into a career are the student employment opportunities that exist at larger universities. In many cases they provide valuable experience in leading-edge research or technology environments. The student consulting and programming jobs I had in college were the number one reason I was hired into my first full time job out of college. I haven't slowed down since then...
6) If you go to college, don't just focus on computers. Take a history class, learn a little about music... When you get older you'll appreciate having at least been exposed to subjects outside your prime area of focus.
-z
Sounds more like UWB will only solve the "last 10 meter" problem. Seriously, I have yet to understand how this technology will be feasible for communications over any appreciable distance. In order to use UWB for distances over say, 100 meters, you need to do one of two things. 1) Add a large umber of repeaters to regenerate the signal and bounce it from hop to hop (a la Metricom) or 2) raise the power. Either of these approaches will result in a significantly higher noise floor. In turn, no one will be able to hear each other over the cacophony of transmissions. TANSTAAFL folks. UWB is Cold Fusion of the 00s.
-z
As for cable, if the amatueur radio operator is getting into CATV, that means CATV is leaking and possibly interfering with other radio systems like public safety two-way and aircraft radio systems. The cable company should clean up their system or risk running afoul of the FCC. A properly operated CATV system will not suffer ingress from an amateur radio operator.
Telephone interference is in the same vein; if the ham's signal is getting into the phone network (as opposed to the neighbors' $9.95 phones) the telephone company is responsible for cleaning their plant up. However, chances are that the telephones themselves (even wireline) aren't properly shielded ...
Broadcast interference *may* be the responsibility of the ham to clean up, but again without knowing the specifics, it's hard to tell. Part of the problem may be that the ham is using ungodly amount of power when low power would do. Maybe if the ham turned down the power things would get cleaned up. Who knows? Has anyone tried working with the guy instead of just trying to make him go away?
A lot of folks would rather not work with the ham to understand what interference modes are present. Chances are they complain about interference but really have a problem with the huge monstrosity of an antenna in the back yard. It's not uncommon for neighbors of a ham with one of these huge antennas to be suffering all sorts of interference problems even when the ham is not operating. There are two sides to every story.
-z
The problem with the Slashdot polling engine is that CowboyNeal would be a candidate in every election...
--z
Software that gets orphaned by a company that goes out of business most likely is not obsolete and its release to the public could have damaging effects on competitors. However, if that's the case, it's the job of the bankruptcy judge, trustee, or whoever is shutting down the company to recognize that software still has value. If the software is still so competitive it could put someone else out of business, chances are someone will want to buy that software. And that value should be returned to creditors or shareholders of the defunct company that otherwise would receive nothing.
Abandonware on the other hand, is software that its "parent" deems obsolete and of little or no value anymore. There are a lot of other programmers (both hobbiest and professional) that could take advantage of recycling "useless" code. O'Reilly's example of a user wanting to share "obsolete" software for a niche application is something I have experienced myself and it is frustrating. I say encourage companies to release their abandonware to the public.
In either case however, the decision should be voluntary, and in the case of bankruptcy, with input from all interested parties.
I can understand why companies (especially the big guys) are reluctant to share abandonware. The support issue really never goes away. In some cases there might be some lingering IP that you carried through to your current products that your competitors still don't have, and you might not even know it. I think a lot of companies hold onto abandonware because they don't want to unknowingly form the basis for someone else's business or worse yet, aid their competitors.
-z
For example, lets look at a situation where I need to tranfer data from the east coast to the west coast and my round trip time is 70 ms. If I have a 32 Mbps link, I can send 64K in about 2 ms. So I have to wait 68 ms until I send another 64K. This gives an effective throughput of less than 1 Mbps. Throw in the slightest amount of congestion and things go even further downhill real fast.
This is a well know problem that has been addressed. Special implenetations of ftp clients and servers are available free (as in beer) to take advatage of large TCP windows. It sounds like these guys are trying to use this phenomena to sell their new compression algorithm.
And by the way, I don't buy their spin about getting "data from one place to another without actually transmitting the data." This is applying compression directly at the communications channel pure and simple. This is analogous to a (hypothetical) ftp client that gzips everything before it is put on the wire and sends it to an ftp server that automatically gunips it at the other end....
--z
--z
There are what I would call "confederations" of sites and networks which maintain connectivity through private networks, most likely research-community and government oriented. e.g. Abilene(Internet2), CA*Net, APAN, ESnet, etc. The members of these confederations may be different research labs, universities, etc which have need for complex routing policies based on endpoint and which private network to take. Unfortunately, the tools for implementing such policy are weak and often fall back on making decisions based on IP address. This in turn means that certain IP addresses are used to cause traffic to flow in a certain way and must be blocked to the public Internet.
Now with all of that said, one would naturally assume this could be accomplished with RFC 1918 (private) address space and shouldn't require using up valuable public address space. This is true if there was only one confederation, but many of these semi-private groups exist and many of the individual organizations participate in multiple confederations simultaneously. This means if RFC1918 address space were used for each confederation, someone would need to be responsible to make sure no conflicts existed in the variuous private address spaces. This would be problematic becuase 1) the confederations generally don't cooperate with each other (not in an antagonistic sense, more like ships-in-the-night) and 2) this would take take up someone's time which even in the research community is genereally not free (as in beer). Some confederations don't even know others exist. Furthermore, even if such a project were undertaken, all of the participants would need to agree on a common chunk of the RFC1918 space. This would be hard to do as many organizations probably have already used varying parts of this space for their own purposes. (again, none of which were coordinated.) Some people would not be happy about having to renumber.
So in order to maintain unique address space amongst this web of semi-private networks, the particpants simply use additional addresses out of the global Internet address space but only announce it amongst themselves. i.e. The global Internet registry is used to also coordinate use of addresses across these multiple, private interconnections of (usually) public institutions.
Now, I don't think this is the main cause of hidden address space. In fact it's probably so small compared to other causes that it is probably not necessary to address at this point. However, I wanted to offer it up as a legitimate reason some parts of the global Internet are not reachable from commodity ISPs.
-z
What made VHS take off was that JVC licensed VHS to anyone who wanted to make VCRs for little or no licensing fee while Sony charged manufacturers a fortune to license Beta technology. Sony ended up only licensing Beta to two or three consumer electonics manufacturers while JVC licensed to everyone else. The ensuing competition drove VHS prices down and everybody bought VHS VCRs.
IMHO, the VHS/Beta analogy doesn't apply to Microsoft. Apple played the role of Sony by retaining tight control of their hardware, while IBM played JVC by essentially giving their technology away so everybody and their brother cranked out PC clones. M$ was at the right place at the right time.
-z
...But people have been conditioned to accept software bugs and security holes as the norm. People's expectations of software (whether on their own PC or on an Internet server somewhere) is so low that MS can get away with crap like this. What low expectations don't cover, the EULA will. If a negligence suit ever saw trial, I bet the jury would be hit over the head with the "IN NO EVENT SHALL MICROSOFT AND/OR ITS SUPPLIERS BE LIABLE FOR...ANY DAMAGES WHATSOEVER..." language from the EULA. After all, the users agreed to live with this level of service. If Ford and Firestone only had a EULA to cover their problem...
-z
I agree that the applications that are needed to drive 3G just aren't there. Video phones are the first app that everyone talks about, but a lot of companies (going all the way back to Ma Bell in the early '70s) have lost buckets of money thinking people have the strong desire to see each other when they talk on the phone.
I may be stating the obvious, but the overhyping of technology is nothing new in the wireless arena. I can remember how PCS was going to revolutionize wireless communications and put cellular to shame. The few minor bells and whistles that PCS eventually did bring (paging and SMS) were incremental at best and were quickly adopted by the cellular folks. Today you can't tell the difference between the two...
--z
What's even worse is trying to solder a heavy gauge copper conductor. (e.g. AWG No. 6) You can't get the solder to flow because the copper transmits all of the heat right out of the iron and away from what you're trying to solder... You practically need a propane torch to get it right... This is why electricians rely on heavy duty compression lugs instead of trying to solder. For really heavy duty connections (like grounding and bonding with AWG 4/0), exothermic welding (similar to thermite) is used to generate enough heat to make a good connection. (OK, slightly OT, but it illustrates how well copper transmits heat...)
--z
--z
I find it ironic that anyone with an Internet connection can anonymously find out where I live, my telephone number, the size of my house and how much I paid for it, whether or not I received a speeding ticket, etc. but I can't read the NY Times article without getting a ^@$#*!* username and password. (OK, you can register a fake name, but that's more than what you have to do to check up on me.)
Public information should be public, but I don't think completely unfettered access is necessarily good either. On the other hand, if specific checks and balances are put in place to protect those who have information in public databases, they can be used as roadblocks by those who have something to hide. I have no idea how you strike a balance between the two. Perhaps the traditional method of going down to the courthouse is not too far off the mark.
-z
As an engineer, I'm dissapointed they haven't released a similar study on the exponential constant, e. After all, e is probably even more fascinating since e^(j*pi)= -1
--z
Granted, in some cities the ATS right-of-way alone was valuable, but utilizing it required a great deal more than pulling new cable through existing conduit. In many large cities you can still find WU manholes right next to the Bell manholes, but I haven't heard of any cities where the WU conduit has been used extensively. Has anyone else?
--zawada
Pease's articles do an excellent job of describing the real world and cutting through the scientist and theoretician rhetoric. If you've never read his column in Electronic Design, check out the archive at http://www.planetee.com/planetee/servlet/DisplayDo cument?ArticleID=8141. I highly recommend reading his work.
--zawada
Did I like not being one of the more popular kids in school? No. Did I like dealing with the (luckily few) teachers who didn't treat me in the most fair manner? No. But being in certain situations that may have been less than desirable gave me valuable experiences in life that give me the confidence to be the person I am today.
These types of incidents, whether they be school-sponsored censorship or peer-generated angst, are of little significance. What is important is what we take away from the experiences. I feel my job as a parent will to give my son the same support my parents gave me throughout my childhood and young adulthood, not try to eliminate obsticles. That way when he becomes a man, he will be able to deal with crap appropriately and get what he wants out of life.
The girl in the science fair story learned an extremely valuable lesson about the world in which we live. I'm sorry she had to learn it at such a young age. Hopefully her parents will teach her to not be discouraged, to press on, and continue to adjust her course so she can continue to persue her interests and express her views.
--zawada