Re:Attention: Everyone who reads Slashdot
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GeekCorps v2.0
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· Score: 1
As a consultant who has been there and done that in Russia and Uzbekistan. In these cases, like many countries there is wealth but regrettably, too many people at the top have been dipping their finger in the pie.
Our goals have been to try to take processes away from eaily corruptible officials and give it to semi automated systems which are harder to lean on.
Did it help, well maybe a little. Maybe more people can come after us and continue our work out there.
Bravery though is most a load of balls. Personal danger is probably less than walking around NYC, probably less (was nearly bombed once). Health problems are nothing like as bad as malaria, but amoebic dysentry is no joke either!
Working from -30C to +42C.....
Good point, pls someone mod this back up
on
GeekCorps v2.0
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· Score: 1
This is a very real point. Lots of the hardware that ends up in these places is hardly state of the art. A 486 running at 100MHz is pretty like bliss to some of these people and is probably about as much as the Ministry of Finance in some of these countries.
However one of the issues that is real and that is how to run projects. The people can work well as individuals but project working and engineering come in second place.
Many years ago, we were using non-rotating disks for an OpenVMS system. ESE 20s, I think they were called. If you pulled the plug, an integral recharagble battery allowed the content to be written to a hard-drive without data loss.
All very well until some bright spark from A well known Consulting company decided to run a test by power cycling them many times consecutively. Of course, the battery went flat and the thing failed.
Apart from not being able to cope with a power cut every 15 minutes (maybe that means a problem in California), the things worked very well and were used to store critical files such as the database recovery journals. These things used to be the size of a minicomputer but quite happily fit with disk and integral battery into a 5.25" bay, probably even a 3.5" bay now.
If the director really doesn't like it, there is a thing in Holywood as an Alan Smithee movie. This is a director's name credited on a movie where the director didn't want to be associueated with it. I saw one by accident once and, yes it was a disjointed disaster.
Wasn't that one of the reasons what DVD's were for. One movie but multiple possibilities. The last I heard about this, the only people using this are the DVD pr0n industry with multi-viewpoints.
Why can't we have the possibility on DVD? Sure we get out-takes, even alternative endings, but can't I select the director's cut and the theatrical release from the menu?
Forget ST:TMP What about Galaxy Quest?
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ST:TMP Fixer Upper
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· Score: 1
Galaxy Quest was a parody, but overall it was definitely the better movie. Heavans above, we may even see a GQ 2!!!!!
Lets face it, ST:TMP wasn't that good, neither were many of the sequels - although I paid money in a theatre to see each.
Let those old movies rest in piece. Too much time has elaspsed to dig that one out and put it onto the editing desk again.
I remeber some time ago, an idiot was pushing a perpetual motion machine of some variety. He didn't say so obviously, but the concept of getting more work out of something than was put in was there, but dressed up in some advanced physics gobbledygook.
Well somebody trashed the idea. They did it intelligently and used again some advanced physics to demonstrate the hole in the idea.
Says the first guy: You Fsked up my IPO, I'm going to sue!!!!
AFAIK, he didn't but it shows you the kind of mentality.
The point is that your former employer is probably upset that they can not gouge any shareholders in the same way. That is the route they would take to compensate themselves. Great isn't it!!!!!!!
Um who is paying for your calls? GSM may work in many countries in the world but I don't call $8/min very affordable. For locals in that particular country, international calls from a mobile are forgettable unless you have good connections with the telephone company.
Sorry, but whilst the mobile phone is a device from heaven for comms, the fees make it emergency use only in many countries for international calls. The mobile phone companies assume that because you have a mobile phone, either you have free calls or an expensive multinational paying your bill that they can gouge. It shouldn't cost any more for international calls from mobiles other than that of additional charge for the air-link. However, this doesn't stop the mobile company from charging a pile.
To add insult to injury your home carrier will further hit you for 25% roaming fee as they collect the money and pass it to the local company. Actually, it only ever goes as far as a clearer.
The guys sitting out in the copper boxes may want the latest and greatest in imagery, however lower-res images are interesting for a lot of people.
First of all, what is the easiest way for a country to check its agricultural production? Sat. Imagery. How can I quickly see pollution effects? Again sat. imagery. How can I see the growth of a city, again sat. imagery. We can buy old images comparitively easily now, we can even find them on the web, but they are out of date.
The point is let the boys have their toys, but there are a lot of people who would be quite interested in current slightly lower res. imagery and it would be great if we had some common tools to work with it. Of course there are military uses, but what about everyone else who wants to work with GIS?
Usually you will find less bugs in Russian software. Frankly, it is very difficult to persuade a Russian programmer that his work is ready to ship.
As for holes inserted by nefarious government agencies. Believe me, I have met people from these agencies. They fundementally don't understand (the wages are terrible) and a commercial s/w developer wouldn't think of compromising their stuff by allowing these agencies anywhere near the code.
I can't speak for China or India, but with Russian stuff, you don't have to worry unless you buy a black box with a seal "FAPSI Approved".
No, all the govt crypto agencies are scared sh1tless about strong cryptography. Some versions of PGP had bugs (which have since been fixed), the advantage of open source. Mostly it is very secure. If it could be attacked, Bin Laden would be a high enough priority for the NSA to use significant computer power to attack his traffic. I guarantee his sat phone is bugged, but what use is that unless cleartext is used.
Remember the NSA is an institution and part of the government. Neither the govt. or institutions are known for efficiency. During wartime, their entrance procedures are relaxed, so this is how truely innovative persons like Turing were invited to join GCHQ during WW2.
Van Eck monitoring works, but it is quite difficult when you can't get close. The same applies to installation of keystroke logging. Not many NSA agents want to drive their black wagons in the middle of Afghanistan. Kabul is not eactly user friendly and where bin Laden hangs out is likely to be even less.
I would put down this to an attempt by the NSA to spread FUD.
Probably a passphrase vulnerability on his secret keyring. If you try long enough, of course you can come up with the combination - it just isn't going to be very fast.
Wonder why, because the tuner is similar to that in a TV? Could it just be that a PC is a fairly sh1tty environment RF wise and the tuner can not cope?
You have a duty of care not just directly to the patient but also to the information about that patient. This means what other people have suggested, high-level security.
First of all you need to plan two networks, a public one and an internal one. The two should only be interconnected through a firewall. The public side is what connects you to the internet and any publicly accessible terminals, say in the waiting room. The private side is everything else. You will need to double up on all your servers to ensure availability and make regular backups which are store securely off-site.
I would suggest using tokens such as smart-cards for identifying patients. Only allow access to confidential data through public networks over https using the card. Patients who want remote access can pay the $30 or so for the reader.
Workstations for the clinic should have readers so the data for a patient can be retrieved quickly and without ambiguity. To ensure that the card is being used by the right person, think about having a photograph in the database so the presenter is tied to the card (important when a person has more than one patient card, such as a carer or parent). Information about drug restrictions due to adverse reactions should be flagged immediately.
None of this is cheap, but it could all be done by mostly taking off-the-shelf s/w and fitting it together.
A: How can you be fired for choosing IBM, however badly the project screwed up!
If Accentua or whichever other of the big-4.5 consultaing companies screw up, there is also lots of liability insurance to dream of!!! The large size consultancies are like airbags for the company. It doesn't matter if you make the wrong decision, because you can save yourself in front of your board and shareholders by blaming the consultancy!!!
When you have a lot of computer equipment, one of the major issues isn't just the power it draws but the heat it kicks out. I have been in places where the server farm is powered down outside hours. Unfortunately, the a/c didn't react fast enough and it was very cold in the computer room.
I like the idea, but we need to look again at the whole heat and a/c issue.
The probability of cable failure is also very dependent upon other factors such as batch and physical location. If a cable is somewhere that is hot and it vibrates a lot, then it is more likely to fail. If the batch is a teensy-weensy bit weaker, then again, increased liability.
A critical error with the DC10 is that although it triple redundant systems, they all followed a similar route. A pressure problem cracked the floor of a DC10 at Orly (the hold door wasn't sealed), the cables broke together and it went uncontrollable.
The NMD is dubious science (classed by most people with a slightly lower success probability than cold-fusion) and it is even worse engineering. Just look at the test record to date and the attempts to launder the records. The idiots pushing NMD are crooks wanting to swindle the tax-payer out of serious dollars.
Ok, first I should add that I am partially responsible for starting a high-growth market segment in St. Petersburg, Russia, sort of like NASDAQ and Germany's Neuer Markt. I work as a technical advisor on the project but shall we say, have a lot of contact with how such markets work in the west.
An IPO costs loads of money. It requires corporate restructuring, marketing of the issue, compliance documentation and their is the risk that the issue falls flat.
The guy who picks up the risk is the lead issuer. In this case CSFB. Like any professional, they look at the risk and charge a premium so that they are compensated for the case that an issue fails. Their premium is a guaranteed piece of the action. I guess they are also working as a specialist, so they need to have an inventory of shares as they must underwrite the post-IPO liquidity.
A lead issuer generally goes out and gets some others to help out. Generally, they guarantee to the issuer that a percentage of their shares will be placed at better than a particular price. This is a heavy risk, so generally the lead issuer forms a consortium to underwrite the issue and then runs sweetheart deals with its own favoured investors who help out by guaranteeing the market. The bank therefore does not take so much direct risk, but takes its percentage from the cash flowing through.
The end result is a placement that generates cash for the issuer, but a successful placement makes boartloads of cash for the underwriting consortium. There is no guarnteed path to fortune by being a consortium participant so you have to unload risk. Once or twice, the investors taking the ultimate risk get stuffed so they need some sweet issues as well to keep them hungry for the higher risk ones.
Post IPO is something else. Anyone who was buying at the P/E ratios that were running around before the crash was climbing into a bubble. A company's real value is a composite of current and future value, but that future value needs a definite horizon beyond which you can see a real return on investment.
Essentially I agree with someone elses comment that this is a group of shareholders to winge their way out of a deal that went sour with the post-IPO collapse in the share-price.
Well, given all the pirate copies of MS software out there, you can understand the why of it. I have used MAC-based identification before on my own stuff and it works but only if you have the infrastructure to cope with legitamate licence moves. For a limited sales volume it is supportable - but an MS OS?
The problem is that I can make a PID generator (like existed earlier for MS software) and quickly register new PIDs. By definition, the product must contain a PID validity checker and this can be reverse-engineered. So a legal user can end up trying to register a PID that some pirate has stolen.
Last point is, what about the unconnected user? Many users of Microsoft products outside the western-world are not internet connected or don't like to go online to register. For example, the number may be toll-free but if it takes ten attempts to get through because of bad line quality (think Eastern Europe and Central Asia), then nobody wants to go through the hassle.
OTOH, maybe those MS pirate users may start to look again at other solutions that are legitimately free?
If it makes the taxpayers money go further then carry advertising would be a good thing.
The problem is that maybe a rival to an advertiser who is a taxpayer may object. This is one reason why full commercialism offers the best flexibility.
You don't know. I know a little because I have been working on a couple of projects in the Former Soviet Union.
The economy has some problems and the mafia are not nearly as bif a problem as you think. Personal taxation is now done to 13% of annual income so many more persons are being encouraged to enter the system.
Why shouldn't the Russians accept commercial money to help their space program? If they want to be the first to offer the possibility of tourism then what is the problem?
In the US, this would be significantly more difficult because you would have to sign a boat-load of disclaimers before you crossed the starting line. One endemic disease in the US is the lawyer who effectively prevents many forms of high-risk activity being offered on a commercial basis. For example, you can't even commercially white-wate raft above a level 3 rapid in the US because of legal difficulties (5 is permissable elsewhere), so just think what would happen if you said to your legal dept that you want to offer space-tourism.
As a frequent visitor to Russia (and even a part-time resident), I can say one thing. Oil.
The US is the largest oil consumer in the world and Russia is underproducing. However, you don't need a tunnel to move oil. Russia has other things though. It has palladium (worlds only real source), platinum and loads of other stuff.
All raw materials though are handled through state related entities or the oligarchs who acquired their 'interest' through the somewhat faulty privatisation process. These persons are always looking for easier ways to reach the market place and fewer intermediaries (and therefore more profit!).
The main point is that such a major project, would, unfortunately create even greater opportunities for the diversion of the large sums of money (probably World Bank) into the pockets of a few persons (politicians and oligarchs). The Russian far-east already has a very bad reputation in this respect (even in Russia).
Therefore on the basis of my experience in the former-Soviet Union, I would counsel caution and state that such a project would be considerably more risky than the roulette table.
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Our goals have been to try to take processes away from eaily corruptible officials and give it to semi automated systems which are harder to lean on.
Did it help, well maybe a little. Maybe more people can come after us and continue our work out there.
Bravery though is most a load of balls. Personal danger is probably less than walking around NYC, probably less (was nearly bombed once). Health problems are nothing like as bad as malaria, but amoebic dysentry is no joke either!
Working from -30C to +42C.....
However one of the issues that is real and that is how to run projects. The people can work well as individuals but project working and engineering come in second place.
All very well until some bright spark from A well known Consulting company decided to run a test by power cycling them many times consecutively. Of course, the battery went flat and the thing failed.
Apart from not being able to cope with a power cut every 15 minutes (maybe that means a problem in California), the things worked very well and were used to store critical files such as the database recovery journals. These things used to be the size of a minicomputer but quite happily fit with disk and integral battery into a 5.25" bay, probably even a 3.5" bay now.
If the director really doesn't like it, there is a thing in Holywood as an Alan Smithee movie. This is a director's name credited on a movie where the director didn't want to be associueated with it. I saw one by accident once and, yes it was a disjointed disaster.
Why can't we have the possibility on DVD? Sure we get out-takes, even alternative endings, but can't I select the director's cut and the theatrical release from the menu?
Lets face it, ST:TMP wasn't that good, neither were many of the sequels - although I paid money in a theatre to see each.
Let those old movies rest in piece. Too much time has elaspsed to dig that one out and put it onto the editing desk again.
Well somebody trashed the idea. They did it intelligently and used again some advanced physics to demonstrate the hole in the idea.
Says the first guy: You Fsked up my IPO, I'm going to sue!!!!
AFAIK, he didn't but it shows you the kind of mentality.
The point is that your former employer is probably upset that they can not gouge any shareholders in the same way. That is the route they would take to compensate themselves. Great isn't it!!!!!!!
To add insult to injury your home carrier will further hit you for 25% roaming fee as they collect the money and pass it to the local company. Actually, it only ever goes as far as a clearer.
First of all, what is the easiest way for a country to check its agricultural production? Sat. Imagery. How can I quickly see pollution effects? Again sat. imagery. How can I see the growth of a city, again sat. imagery. We can buy old images comparitively easily now, we can even find them on the web, but they are out of date.
The point is let the boys have their toys, but there are a lot of people who would be quite interested in current slightly lower res. imagery and it would be great if we had some common tools to work with it. Of course there are military uses, but what about everyone else who wants to work with GIS?
As for holes inserted by nefarious government agencies. Believe me, I have met people from these agencies. They fundementally don't understand (the wages are terrible) and a commercial s/w developer wouldn't think of compromising their stuff by allowing these agencies anywhere near the code.
I can't speak for China or India, but with Russian stuff, you don't have to worry unless you buy a black box with a seal "FAPSI Approved".
Remember the NSA is an institution and part of the government. Neither the govt. or institutions are known for efficiency. During wartime, their entrance procedures are relaxed, so this is how truely innovative persons like Turing were invited to join GCHQ during WW2.
Van Eck monitoring works, but it is quite difficult when you can't get close. The same applies to installation of keystroke logging. Not many NSA agents want to drive their black wagons in the middle of Afghanistan. Kabul is not eactly user friendly and where bin Laden hangs out is likely to be even less.
I would put down this to an attempt by the NSA to spread FUD.
Probably a passphrase vulnerability on his secret keyring. If you try long enough, of course you can come up with the combination - it just isn't going to be very fast.
Wonder why, because the tuner is similar to that in a TV? Could it just be that a PC is a fairly sh1tty environment RF wise and the tuner can not cope?
First of all you need to plan two networks, a public one and an internal one. The two should only be interconnected through a firewall. The public side is what connects you to the internet and any publicly accessible terminals, say in the waiting room. The private side is everything else. You will need to double up on all your servers to ensure availability and make regular backups which are store securely off-site.
I would suggest using tokens such as smart-cards for identifying patients. Only allow access to confidential data through public networks over https using the card. Patients who want remote access can pay the $30 or so for the reader.
Workstations for the clinic should have readers so the data for a patient can be retrieved quickly and without ambiguity. To ensure that the card is being used by the right person, think about having a photograph in the database so the presenter is tied to the card (important when a person has more than one patient card, such as a carer or parent). Information about drug restrictions due to adverse reactions should be flagged immediately.
None of this is cheap, but it could all be done by mostly taking off-the-shelf s/w and fitting it together.
Q: Why choose IBM?
A: How can you be fired for choosing IBM, however badly the project screwed up!
If Accentua or whichever other of the big-4.5 consultaing companies screw up, there is also lots of liability insurance to dream of!!! The large size consultancies are like airbags for the company. It doesn't matter if you make the wrong decision, because you can save yourself in front of your board and shareholders by blaming the consultancy!!!
I like the idea, but we need to look again at the whole heat and a/c issue.
A critical error with the DC10 is that although it triple redundant systems, they all followed a similar route. A pressure problem cracked the floor of a DC10 at Orly (the hold door wasn't sealed), the cables broke together and it went uncontrollable.
NMD will not help any kind of space program.
An IPO costs loads of money. It requires corporate restructuring, marketing of the issue, compliance documentation and their is the risk that the issue falls flat.
The guy who picks up the risk is the lead issuer. In this case CSFB. Like any professional, they look at the risk and charge a premium so that they are compensated for the case that an issue fails. Their premium is a guaranteed piece of the action. I guess they are also working as a specialist, so they need to have an inventory of shares as they must underwrite the post-IPO liquidity.
A lead issuer generally goes out and gets some others to help out. Generally, they guarantee to the issuer that a percentage of their shares will be placed at better than a particular price. This is a heavy risk, so generally the lead issuer forms a consortium to underwrite the issue and then runs sweetheart deals with its own favoured investors who help out by guaranteeing the market. The bank therefore does not take so much direct risk, but takes its percentage from the cash flowing through.
The end result is a placement that generates cash for the issuer, but a successful placement makes boartloads of cash for the underwriting consortium. There is no guarnteed path to fortune by being a consortium participant so you have to unload risk. Once or twice, the investors taking the ultimate risk get stuffed so they need some sweet issues as well to keep them hungry for the higher risk ones.
Post IPO is something else. Anyone who was buying at the P/E ratios that were running around before the crash was climbing into a bubble. A company's real value is a composite of current and future value, but that future value needs a definite horizon beyond which you can see a real return on investment.
Essentially I agree with someone elses comment that this is a group of shareholders to winge their way out of a deal that went sour with the post-IPO collapse in the share-price.
In the old days we used to have NICs with field swappable ROMs for the address. Now many high-end NICs allow programming.
The problem is that I can make a PID generator (like existed earlier for MS software) and quickly register new PIDs. By definition, the product must contain a PID validity checker and this can be reverse-engineered. So a legal user can end up trying to register a PID that some pirate has stolen.
Last point is, what about the unconnected user? Many users of Microsoft products outside the western-world are not internet connected or don't like to go online to register. For example, the number may be toll-free but if it takes ten attempts to get through because of bad line quality (think Eastern Europe and Central Asia), then nobody wants to go through the hassle.
OTOH, maybe those MS pirate users may start to look again at other solutions that are legitimately free?
If it makes the taxpayers money go further then carry advertising would be a good thing.
The problem is that maybe a rival to an advertiser who is a taxpayer may object. This is one reason why full commercialism offers the best flexibility.
The economy has some problems and the mafia are not nearly as bif a problem as you think. Personal taxation is now done to 13% of annual income so many more persons are being encouraged to enter the system.
Why shouldn't the Russians accept commercial money to help their space program? If they want to be the first to offer the possibility of tourism then what is the problem?
In the US, this would be significantly more difficult because you would have to sign a boat-load of disclaimers before you crossed the starting line. One endemic disease in the US is the lawyer who effectively prevents many forms of high-risk activity being offered on a commercial basis. For example, you can't even commercially white-wate raft above a level 3 rapid in the US because of legal difficulties (5 is permissable elsewhere), so just think what would happen if you said to your legal dept that you want to offer space-tourism.
The US is the largest oil consumer in the world and Russia is underproducing. However, you don't need a tunnel to move oil. Russia has other things though. It has palladium (worlds only real source), platinum and loads of other stuff.
All raw materials though are handled through state related entities or the oligarchs who acquired their 'interest' through the somewhat faulty privatisation process. These persons are always looking for easier ways to reach the market place and fewer intermediaries (and therefore more profit!).
The main point is that such a major project, would, unfortunately create even greater opportunities for the diversion of the large sums of money (probably World Bank) into the pockets of a few persons (politicians and oligarchs). The Russian far-east already has a very bad reputation in this respect (even in Russia).
Therefore on the basis of my experience in the former-Soviet Union, I would counsel caution and state that such a project would be considerably more risky than the roulette table.
All Amazon has done is to combine the new and the the used book stores. There is nothing wrong with that!
There is nothing sacred about a book. Indeed since it is less easy to copy and resell like a CD, authors really have little reason to complain.