Reminds me (geek time) of part of the story line in William Gibson's "Virtual Light" (I think it was this series and not the Neuromancer series).
Basically, everyone was made immunse to the destructive form of the HIV by infecting them with a benign form of HIV that happened to be destructive to other forms of the virus.
Add in all the usual pontifcating about sciene immitating art.
Unfortunately I have done it when I used to be an engineer on call. Mobile phone and pager and phone calls at 4am from the Managing Director cause the website took half a second longer to load than normal..
Its not the coverage / signals that bother me. Its the potential abuse of it I guess.
I have rarely seen someone with a TV sitting in the park getting in the way of the summer breeze. Radio now and again, and alas far too many mobile phones.
However I guess its fairly inevitable. I guess its time to buy wireless to prepare for never being able to escape work:
Boss: Hey, I know you told us you were picnicing all weekend with family, but our test server that is used once a week during business hours has gone down. We need you to log in and reset the system.. We know you can, you have a tablet PC and that area has wireless connection.
Me: I just retired and will take up potato farming instead..
A anti-geek as it may sound, I really can't see a need for 100% wireless coverage of any country large or small.
When I got to parks or outdoors, I do it to relax and escape the technology that I work with and live with. I go find a tree in a nice park near the river and sit quietly and listen to the water, the wind and the birds.
I really don't want to sit there and hear some guys talking about how they can watch their stock prices change second by second now, or some brat fragging a buddy whilst enjoying nature.
I write 'music'. I legally own the copyright, but for the most part I give it away free. Eventually going to press a CD or two but I'd prefer people listen to it, and that does mean filesharing is fine:)
I will conceed. Although I am fairly certain most OS's come with step-by-step manuals. Admittedly I havent looked at an OS install manual for years now..
Going back to the Win32 world, I can't see how something like Active Directory or Exchange 2003 could be done without a manual to go with it, to explain all your choices. Or back in the *nix world, install Oracle (whatever iteration they are up to) would require a manual.
External documentation is stuff you can print out (or read the already dead tree version) and think about before you act. You can make notes as you go through an install.
Whilst not all software should require it, some things like Operating System and other complex pieces of software really should require it.
But maybe I am old-school and like the idea of doing installs correctly the first time.
Of course there is a serious risk of the ferret eating your audio gear or just curling up and going to sleep in a position that produces a highpitched squeel;)
Depends on your sample rate. Ferrets (unless they develop the power of teleportation) move relative to their previous position. So you'd get a frequency shift more like a therimen (ack, is that the spelling of the damn thing).
Whereas die have a tendency towards randomness (Obviously). Unless you use the randomness to seed an algorithm its going to sounds very musically odd and disjointed.
From memory (and much much geekiness) there were many many more daleks created than were destroyed by 'peter davidson' (i think) in Genesis of the Daleks. Some were sent off-world.
Also in later stories it was discovered the Daleks worked out ways to convert 'humans' into Daleks. This resulted in two 'races' of daleks, one lot who were loyal to Davros (the Emperor darlek) and the other lot that were humanized and somewhat insane.
Also, I understand they have lifesupport built in that lets them live indefinately until some twit blows them up with Nitro-9.
Yes, I have watched far too much Dr Who in my life.
I would assume that the British system of prescriptions are tied to the issuing doctor. To get replacements, one would have to go to the original doctor. Electronic transfer means someone can change doctor without needing to through a tonne of paperwork.
Other advantage of a nice electronic system is that it may be useful for stopping doctor shopping. If each doctor has instant access to medical records, you can fib to them and get more chemicals..
Your information about the LPs on Shellac disks here is quite interesting in itself. An LP, with a little effort and expected sound loss can be played manually. With a few hours of effort I can make a reasonably bad mechanical LP player. Don't even need eletricity to play it, just a lot of effort winding a lever. If the 'power went out' a CD is unreadable. There is no manual way to pull the sound or data from it and reproduce it.
Same goes with books. End of civilization (I have watched Mad Max far too many times I think) and books can still be read. A data CD will just be a way to have a mirror.
Of course, I may be biased. I adore printed books. I have ones that are over 150 years old in my collection. And I always print out my digital books when I can. Reading paper is so much nicer than spending more time staring at a screen.
The problem, as others in this whole article-thread may have already replied, that what happens when there is legitimate mp3 downloads?
I 'write' music. I encourage people to download my tracks and distribute them far and wide. I have thrown a few on P2P services for the sake of curiousity.
Then there are websites about learning languages and so forth. They have legitimate MP3s. Blanket blocking is very short sited.
Agent technology isnt all that new. I did a small research project / paper on them in my undergraduate years. Various military bodies have been using them for ages for modeling purposes.
I think, the reason they are becoming popular again is processing power. We have grunty computer power now on the cheap as well as more intelligent programming languages (well, let me rephrase, languages that allow for quicker prototyping) thus agents have come back into play again.
Basically, all an agent is (yes, they are a pet topic of mine) is a basic AI. One that does a single task very very very well. Intelligence is easier to program if its kept within a certain scope.
The article is quite well written and explains a fair bit. Agents are augmentive rather than replacements. Same principle applied to certain medical Intelligent Agent projects. The Agent assists the doctor in his job (diagnostics mostly).
Hope this helps somewhat and I hope its not too pointless.
I have to agree here. Request Tracker (RT) is an awesome piece of software.
We use it to support our local infrastructure (our products are still run by paper request tracking it seems). Our staff of 50+ send me requests either via email or the web interface and they can be easily categorized, sorted, and delegated to the appropriate staff member to handle them.
The documentation provided with RT also has let me write reporting pages for it, so the PHB can see what level of response time we have, what amount of requests are still open, and the common types of requests (system faults, intranet feature enhancements etc)..
Admittedly, the install dependancies are a touch intense but with CPAN or Debian that is easily fixable.
Plus the latest version is rather nice to look at.
With a mix of local touring, web presence and some form of 'genre sorted' music P2P I suspect an unknown band could do reasonably well.
There is a local perth (western australia) punkish band (not really my cup of tea but they arent too bad) that are starting to get a bit of ear time with people through local promotion, free downloads of their music and a bit of advertising on Livejournal.
One of my all time favourite bands Einstuerzende Neubauten recently (well in the last year) launched a project asking for funding for a new album (its production costs and so forth.).
The project Neubauten offered fans the option of sponsoring them. In turn you got access to video feeds of production and other performances. An exclusive CD, sponsor discounts in upcoming tours (yay!) and access to old and rare material as well as a double CD live album free to download.
They got over twice as much sponsorship as they expected. And as a result are doing phase two (another album and a DVD upon sponsorship).
It can work. New means of artistic creation does work. One doesnt need to be tied to the old systems.
Quite correct that it can bring hosts to their knees although I'd be concerned about having an exchange server directly in the DMZ.
Admittedly we are forced to use Exchange here (woe is me having to keep the thing patched) but its within the Intranet, with a spam filtering 'mail relay' sitting in the DMZ, which then sends email on to the Exchange server..
(I live in Australia were there are only 10,000 people in a LARGE UNI)
I'd be wary of making such a statement. Here in Western Australia one of our big three universities has 22000 students, then there is still UWA and Murdoch.
Now, I am sure in some of our australian states the big universities are only 10000 students, but its not really across the board.
Slashdot Mirror
Reminds me (geek time) of part of the story line in William Gibson's "Virtual Light" (I think it was this series and not the Neuromancer series).
Basically, everyone was made immunse to the destructive form of the HIV by infecting them with a benign form of HIV that happened to be destructive to other forms of the virus.
Add in all the usual pontifcating about sciene immitating art.
Its an interesting film with a fairly positive outcome at the end. People willing to give their own life for their loved ones.
Got good release here in Australia though. And BR2 is doing the same I think.
You do make very good points here, I will have to concede and agree with you :P
Oh well, I can see a use for it myself. Could sit in the park writing on a tablet and email the work back to the home machines easily enough.
Unfortunately I have done it when I used to be an engineer on call. Mobile phone and pager and phone calls at 4am from the Managing Director cause the website took half a second longer to load than normal..
Its not the coverage / signals that bother me. Its the potential abuse of it I guess.
I have rarely seen someone with a TV sitting in the park getting in the way of the summer breeze. Radio now and again, and alas far too many mobile phones.
However I guess its fairly inevitable. I guess its time to buy wireless to prepare for never being able to escape work:
Oh well :)
A anti-geek as it may sound, I really can't see a need for 100% wireless coverage of any country large or small.
When I got to parks or outdoors, I do it to relax and escape the technology that I work with and live with. I go find a tree in a nice park near the river and sit quietly and listen to the water, the wind and the birds.
I really don't want to sit there and hear some guys talking about how they can watch their stock prices change second by second now, or some brat fragging a buddy whilst enjoying nature.
Oh well, I am safe from it in Australia at least.
Good point. I forgot its there. Using both mozilla and opera I don't notice that its running. Oh well, time for a site revision anyhow.
Amusingly my site got a number of hits from /. cause of my post. Rather interesting.
No, you are correct.
I write 'music'. I legally own the copyright, but for the most part I give it away free. Eventually going to press a CD or two but I'd prefer people listen to it, and that does mean filesharing is fine :)
I will conceed. Although I am fairly certain most OS's come with step-by-step manuals. Admittedly I havent looked at an OS install manual for years now..
I'd have to argue with this.
Going back to the Win32 world, I can't see how something like Active Directory or Exchange 2003 could be done without a manual to go with it, to explain all your choices. Or back in the *nix world, install Oracle (whatever iteration they are up to) would require a manual.
External documentation is stuff you can print out (or read the already dead tree version) and think about before you act. You can make notes as you go through an install.
Whilst not all software should require it, some things like Operating System and other complex pieces of software really should require it.
But maybe I am old-school and like the idea of doing installs correctly the first time.
Of course there is a serious risk of the ferret eating your audio gear or just curling up and going to sleep in a position that produces a highpitched squeel ;)
Depends on your sample rate. Ferrets (unless they develop the power of teleportation) move relative to their previous position. So you'd get a frequency shift more like a therimen (ack, is that the spelling of the damn thing).
Whereas die have a tendency towards randomness (Obviously). Unless you use the randomness to seed an algorithm its going to sounds very musically odd and disjointed.
Thanks :)
:(
I sort of realised after I posted that I made a mistake or two.. Alas its been a few years since I have seen the lot of them
From memory (and much much geekiness) there were many many more daleks created than were destroyed by 'peter davidson' (i think) in Genesis of the Daleks. Some were sent off-world.
Also in later stories it was discovered the Daleks worked out ways to convert 'humans' into Daleks. This resulted in two 'races' of daleks, one lot who were loyal to Davros (the Emperor darlek) and the other lot that were humanized and somewhat insane.
Also, I understand they have lifesupport built in that lets them live indefinately until some twit blows them up with Nitro-9.
Yes, I have watched far too much Dr Who in my life.
I would assume that the British system of prescriptions are tied to the issuing doctor. To get replacements, one would have to go to the original doctor. Electronic transfer means someone can change doctor without needing to through a tonne of paperwork.
Other advantage of a nice electronic system is that it may be useful for stopping doctor shopping. If each doctor has instant access to medical records, you can fib to them and get more chemicals..
Your information about the LPs on Shellac disks here is quite interesting in itself. An LP, with a little effort and expected sound loss can be played manually. With a few hours of effort I can make a reasonably bad mechanical LP player. Don't even need eletricity to play it, just a lot of effort winding a lever. If the 'power went out' a CD is unreadable. There is no manual way to pull the sound or data from it and reproduce it.
Same goes with books. End of civilization (I have watched Mad Max far too many times I think) and books can still be read. A data CD will just be a way to have a mirror.
Of course, I may be biased. I adore printed books. I have ones that are over 150 years old in my collection. And I always print out my digital books when I can. Reading paper is so much nicer than spending more time staring at a screen.
Yay for region four!
*meh, its the end of the day, pointless comments are acceptable*
I am afraid you may be very right here.
How best to stiffle independant artists / labels than remove a fairly viable distribution means.
Meh. Never a good sign.
The problem, as others in this whole article-thread may have already replied, that what happens when there is legitimate mp3 downloads?
I 'write' music. I encourage people to download my tracks and distribute them far and wide. I have thrown a few on P2P services for the sake of curiousity.
Then there are websites about learning languages and so forth. They have legitimate MP3s. Blanket blocking is very short sited.
Agent technology isnt all that new. I did a small research project / paper on them in my undergraduate years. Various military bodies have been using them for ages for modeling purposes.
I think, the reason they are becoming popular again is processing power. We have grunty computer power now on the cheap as well as more intelligent programming languages (well, let me rephrase, languages that allow for quicker prototyping) thus agents have come back into play again.
Basically, all an agent is (yes, they are a pet topic of mine) is a basic AI. One that does a single task very very very well. Intelligence is easier to program if its kept within a certain scope.
The article is quite well written and explains a fair bit. Agents are augmentive rather than replacements. Same principle applied to certain medical Intelligent Agent projects. The Agent assists the doctor in his job (diagnostics mostly).
Hope this helps somewhat and I hope its not too pointless.
I have to agree here. Request Tracker (RT) is an awesome piece of software.
We use it to support our local infrastructure (our products are still run by paper request tracking it seems). Our staff of 50+ send me requests either via email or the web interface and they can be easily categorized, sorted, and delegated to the appropriate staff member to handle them.
The documentation provided with RT also has let me write reporting pages for it, so the PHB can see what level of response time we have, what amount of requests are still open, and the common types of requests (system faults, intranet feature enhancements etc)..
Admittedly, the install dependancies are a touch intense but with CPAN or Debian that is easily fixable.
Plus the latest version is rather nice to look at.
I agree totally.
With a mix of local touring, web presence and some form of 'genre sorted' music P2P I suspect an unknown band could do reasonably well.
There is a local perth (western australia) punkish band (not really my cup of tea but they arent too bad) that are starting to get a bit of ear time with people through local promotion, free downloads of their music and a bit of advertising on Livejournal.
Fan sponsored music does work.
One of my all time favourite bands Einstuerzende Neubauten recently (well in the last year) launched a project asking for funding for a new album (its production costs and so forth.).
The project Neubauten offered fans the option of sponsoring them. In turn you got access to video feeds of production and other performances. An exclusive CD, sponsor discounts in upcoming tours (yay!) and access to old and rare material as well as a double CD live album free to download.
They got over twice as much sponsorship as they expected. And as a result are doing phase two (another album and a DVD upon sponsorship).
It can work. New means of artistic creation does work. One doesnt need to be tied to the old systems.
Quite correct that it can bring hosts to their knees although I'd be concerned about having an exchange server directly in the DMZ.
Admittedly we are forced to use Exchange here (woe is me having to keep the thing patched) but its within the Intranet, with a spam filtering 'mail relay' sitting in the DMZ, which then sends email on to the Exchange server..
To each their own I guess.
(I live in Australia were there are only 10,000 people in a LARGE UNI)
I'd be wary of making such a statement. Here in Western Australia one of our big three universities has 22000 students, then there is still UWA and Murdoch.
Now, I am sure in some of our australian states the big universities are only 10000 students, but its not really across the board.