In other countries, it is the norm to pay by direct transfer to the recipients account. With a cheque, you have two pieces of paper to track, whilst with a transfer you only have one, and as you normally give it to your bank, they can be responsible authenticating it.
For Internet banking, this can work well. However, in addition to your password (PIN), you have a list of per transaction authentication numbers (TANs). Having access to a PIN doesn't get you much (other than a balance and a statement). Having a TAN block gives you the full ability to make transfers up to a preagreed limit. Oh, and my bank does support Mozilla as well as IE so Internet banking from Linux works fine.
You may have no interest in Internet banking, but others are very interested.
Many of the units operational in Iraq are not conventional infantry units. They may be artillery units, armored units or whatever. It seems that the likes of the M16 and the M4 are not automatically issued.
Luckily, there is a lively aftermarket in certain weapons such as the AK. It appears that some american units are reissuing the captured equipment to ensure their soldiers are armed.
The AK47 may not be very accurate over a distance, but it is easily serviceable even under bad conditions (i.e., sand) doesn't jam. Sometimes low-tech is a good idea.
I am used to billing screwups and don't consider it a major issue when I receive such a bill. Usually a quick call and it is sorted. I have also had an issue with MS over and MSDN Universal subscriptzion (double billing, sorted after a quick call).
However, forget RH and Suse direct. They are important, but not so much as the likes of HP and IBM who sell both their wares with their respective hardware and provide backup at a level (and price!). Some people will pay for the name and there is no IBM or HP Linux.
Red Hat's enterprise server products have had good coverage and in general, it is seen as being better for business customers. I guess this is mostly because of their press coverage in the English speaking world. However, Suse is popular in Europe, particularly in Germany and this is an important step for them to be able to offer high-end solutions to the PHBs.
Incidentally, Linuxworld Frankfurt is colocated with the European Banking World expo and conference. A ticket for one gets you into to the other. The Bankfest, is for serious PHBs and Linuxworld is offering a day on Linux in finance to attract "Cross-interest".
In other news, Sun's shares (SUNW) were slighlty down. Having Veritas supporting both RH and Suse isn't good news for them.
One main issue that I have with MS is that it doesn't learn well from its technical mistakes.
First, I would like to see developers being cycled through testing and fixit so that they see all sides of the job. Developers do not often make the best testers, but they usually produce better code after they see how testing really works.
I don't know how developers are trained. However, I get the distinct impression that many OS level developers have never really worked with application developers. They don't have much of a clue how a system ends up being (ab)used.
I would like to see firmer control by the PMs, especially over function creep. This does not mean that the PM has to say no, but they must be able to kick back by saying that "if you want x, allow y mandays".
I'm not an advocate of XP (the methodology, not the system) - but too much of MS code seems to be the result of deathmarch programming. PM should never design code around overtime. It happens and is useful in case of emergency, but it should never be planned in from the beginning.
It is my personal feelings that whilst I don't like the way that MS does business, It's basic problems come down to poor engineering management. Perhaps teams are too large, perhaps there are too many changes coming through. I don't know, but the code produced reflects poor internal communications and coordination.
It had ocurred to me that having something looking at the ground ahead for bumps would be kind of useful - even for a human travelling at speed. The problem is soft ground. The boulder may only be a foot high, but if you are going to sink a foot, then in a Landy at least, that can be a problem. The opther issue is whether to go optical (LIDAR) or RF (RADAR). The problem with optical is if you have to go through vegetation, the boulders are masked. I then thought about X-band or above RADAR (but sub-mm waves) - but didn't do anything further.
This is why I can just wish you luck on this. Its bad enough trying to steer a vehicle offroad as a human let alone a machine.
Many places now link their lights together into a green wave - an attempt to ensure that if you have been stopped once on a major road and do not speed, yopu are unlikely to be stopped again.
The contol system also knows about peak-times and vary the green light times accordingly.
The only country where these things seem to work consitently for bicycles seems to be Holland (unless you have a plastic frame). Most other places, the adjustment seems to be way too insensitive.
it is full of engineers but not factories. To get replacement parts may take weeks (or longer, their logistics are crap). They tend to build stuff that is field repairable.
Conditions where stuff is used is variable in Russia. There are Deserts through to tundra, equipment may not be properly sheltered, so it breaks down. However the field repairable philosophy means that their stuff is not the most efficient, and it does break down - however it can be easily fixed. Anywhere.
Lets take this way of doing things into orbit. A 'Field Replaceable Unit' takes a launch and costs a small fortune to get to the station. If you make things slightly less sophisticated but more easily repaired then you win on down time.
I visited a MIR simulator on earth. The level of sophistication was very low even by the standards of the time it was built. They had to bodge a whole lot of things to keep it going, but it was relatively easy and they could get proportionally more science done per person than the ISS crew today.
The ISS is understaffed and has been since the beginning. It was planned that there would be an amergency return vehicle that could take a crew of seven down. That was late then scrapped. The only 'life-boat' is a Soyuz. This limits the permanent crew to 3.
A second Soyuz could be added (I believe there are docking facilities for up to three vehicles) but the Russians are currently hard up and they have been getting no extra money of late due to a dispute over Iran.
So we wnd up with up to three very busy people only. Most of their time is for the plumbing, etc.
You may find that the funds that you are currently paying for your internal ISP aren't necessarily convertable. In business, I have come across some really strange charges that are applied by the IS department to my clients and look for ways to minimize them by outsourcing.
Regretablly, as the outsoucing company isn't contributing to the bottom line, the real cash available is much smaller. However, having an outsourcing proposal on the table when discussing service-level agreements and costs works wonders.
On Common-Carrier status, this one is easy. You incorporate an ISP as a non-profit but owned by the college. As a single function company, it is easy to have common carrier status. The fact that it only provides services for the college and its students is immaterial.
Isn't 40MPH a bit slow? I seem to remember some back of the envelope calculations stating that you need to be up to about 70MPH on the road segments to keep the average high enough for the nastier terrain.
I don't know about auto-pilots but I have driven real SUVs (Land-rover) seriously off road. For a human being it isn't exactly easy and when there is no track at all to follow, 20MPH can be difficult to maintain. As a human, even with the ground clearance of a real SUV, you are very aware of the danger of catching your oil-sump on a rock (I dinged it multiple times, but was slow enough not to crack it).
I wish you good luck though and please come back here and tell us about it!!!!
I would be very interested if the obfuscation works, perhaps a different test run with no Email addresses in the message but allowing the experimental Email address to be obfuscated in the usual '/.' way.
In Oz, an a/c is regarded as mandatory, alternately, you use the breeze to cool yourself. However, these cars are incredibly well streamlined, so the driver can't exactly open the window.
For those not wanting to subscribe to RHN for the standard RH distributions, there has always been apt4rpm. Does this exist for RHEL as well?
Something like a subscription is better though because it proactively warns you of updates - with apt4rpm you have to seek it out yourself. There is also the problem that unlike RHN (or the similar for enterprises) patches aren't checked so much for compatability with other patches.
A major nuclear disaster would be, well, like Chernobyl. Really bad in the surrounding area, Nothing at all a hundred miles away.
The British government prevented the use of lamb for over five years from Wales and Cumbria which received quantities of rain immediately after Chernobyl. The fission byproducts were scattered a lot further than the Ukraine.
I'm aware of natural radiation, and btw, the Welsh get quite a lot of that too from granite. In some parts of the UK (Cornwall and Scotland), false floors are suggested with ventilation to prevent build-up of argon radio-isotopes fron Uranium in the granite.
The thing is that we are talking about probabilities. The argon thing was talked about as having the risk of smoking a packet of cigarretes per day. Not good if you don't smoke, even worse if you do. For a non-smoker, it would knock an average of five years of your life.
This was a radio-thermal isotope generator - similar to those used on some space probes. The stuff is nasty if you get real close, but otherwise, part from the danger of distribution by fire (especially if loaded with Pu), is relatively safe.
These were also used for some remote surveillance systems and beacons.
The technology that you are looking at is known as "Print on Demand". Given a source text, it will produce a bound copy of the book as and when needed. The book that is produced is the latest version at the time of printing, laser duplex-printed, trimmed and bound.
Off course printing costs a lot more than offset-Litho, but there is no stock for the publisher or shop to worry about.
Yes we still need a referee mechanism (even forgetting the tenure issue, there is still an issue of quality assurance) and an editor/proof-reader to be sure that everything is correctly put together - but it rather changes the publishing business.
Please remember that Donald E. Knuth wrote TeX and METAFONT because of the issues he had with the printing and publiching business. He triggerred a small revolution.
Before Winders was respectable enough to be seen on the desktop there was VMS. VMS was the antithesis of Unix, huge and monolithic, but it worked very well, especially as Digital didn't favour the API of the month club.
In those days, many people used Unix and VMS or other big systems and had a good idea of the merits of both and the book The Unix Haters Handbook. It is humorous but it makes some valid points. Perhaps it wasn't up to date with all Unix versions at the time, and in the same way can we expect Mr Raymond to be aware of all the goodness lurking somewhere within the Windows code base (there must be some!).
Perhaps Raymond should have reused but praphrased that quote from the forward of The Unix Haters Handbook:
It might be that once in a while Microsoft allows a programmer to fix a bug rather than apply for a patent so some of the superficial problems might not appear in a particular version of Windows.
This is a good disclaimer but this was originally written about Unix, meaning specifically closed source versions from vendors like SCO. What 'fixed' Unix, was freeing the programmer from the patents with open sorce versions like BSD and Linux.
In the end Raymond is kind of right. Microsoft themselves are having problems getting everyone to upgrade. How many copies of 95 and 98 are out there still? The NT kernel is kind of cool but not everyone has that kind of horsepower.
In one respect I agree with you, cygwin isn't the best because it uses the Unix concept of relatively lightweight processes, which NT lacks.
On the other hand, the file system is completely mapped under/cygdrive, there is access to services and the registry. I don't exactly call that being ignorant of Windows.
Personally, I'm more inclined when doing system/network management thingies to go off in the direction of Perl/Win32 which gives me more than CMD and better implemented than WSH or VBS.
Total nonsense. Before GW2, Saddam and Osmama hated each other about as much as the americans. Maybe there is cooperation now, but definitely not before the war (they were from rival Islamic sects).
WMD
What about the weapons of mass destruction?
Oh, after that they started saying that he wasn't a nice chap (true), but that didn't stop Rummy from doing business with him in the past. Can you blame people for remind Bush and Blair about the reasons they quoted for going to war?
Um who examined him? Those who are familiar with the joys of call-up may also be aware of the benefit of a friendly family doctor. The deterioration in condition suggested by the above is only possible if he suffered a major disease or an incomplete recovery from an accident.
Of course, in Russia, a suitable medical report can be obtained for around $5000 to avoid the draft. This would *never* happen in the US. The price is much too cheap.
because I like my French goodies (wine, cheese and so on) cheaper.
France has been traditionally friendly to the Arab states and it has had a long history of doing so. Yes, it sells arms there probably when it shouldn't, but then so do the US (and their arms exports dwarf France's). Their arguments in favour of granting more time to the weapons inspectors seem to have proved correct after all.
I agree that France argued cogently in the UN, but so did others for the war (except GWB, the term cogent can not apply). It just seems the latter were relying too much on spin.
Slashdot Mirror
For Internet banking, this can work well. However, in addition to your password (PIN), you have a list of per transaction authentication numbers (TANs). Having access to a PIN doesn't get you much (other than a balance and a statement). Having a TAN block gives you the full ability to make transfers up to a preagreed limit. Oh, and my bank does support Mozilla as well as IE so Internet banking from Linux works fine.
You may have no interest in Internet banking, but others are very interested.
Luckily, there is a lively aftermarket in certain weapons such as the AK. It appears that some american units are reissuing the captured equipment to ensure their soldiers are armed.
The AK47 may not be very accurate over a distance, but it is easily serviceable even under bad conditions (i.e., sand) doesn't jam. Sometimes low-tech is a good idea.
It is frightening that a joke about Bill C's peccadillos should get modded up so quickly and another more relevant comment about 1984 not.
However, forget RH and Suse direct. They are important, but not so much as the likes of HP and IBM who sell both their wares with their respective hardware and provide backup at a level (and price!). Some people will pay for the name and there is no IBM or HP Linux.
Incidentally, Linuxworld Frankfurt is colocated with the European Banking World expo and conference. A ticket for one gets you into to the other. The Bankfest, is for serious PHBs and Linuxworld is offering a day on Linux in finance to attract "Cross-interest".
In other news, Sun's shares (SUNW) were slighlty down. Having Veritas supporting both RH and Suse isn't good news for them.
First, I would like to see developers being cycled through testing and fixit so that they see all sides of the job. Developers do not often make the best testers, but they usually produce better code after they see how testing really works.
I don't know how developers are trained. However, I get the distinct impression that many OS level developers have never really worked with application developers. They don't have much of a clue how a system ends up being (ab)used.
I would like to see firmer control by the PMs, especially over function creep. This does not mean that the PM has to say no, but they must be able to kick back by saying that "if you want x, allow y mandays".
I'm not an advocate of XP (the methodology, not the system) - but too much of MS code seems to be the result of deathmarch programming. PM should never design code around overtime. It happens and is useful in case of emergency, but it should never be planned in from the beginning.
It is my personal feelings that whilst I don't like the way that MS does business, It's basic problems come down to poor engineering management. Perhaps teams are too large, perhaps there are too many changes coming through. I don't know, but the code produced reflects poor internal communications and coordination.
This is why I can just wish you luck on this. Its bad enough trying to steer a vehicle offroad as a human let alone a machine.
The contol system also knows about peak-times and vary the green light times accordingly.
The only country where these things seem to work consitently for bicycles seems to be Holland (unless you have a plastic frame). Most other places, the adjustment seems to be way too insensitive.
Conditions where stuff is used is variable in Russia. There are Deserts through to tundra, equipment may not be properly sheltered, so it breaks down. However the field repairable philosophy means that their stuff is not the most efficient, and it does break down - however it can be easily fixed. Anywhere.
Lets take this way of doing things into orbit. A 'Field Replaceable Unit' takes a launch and costs a small fortune to get to the station. If you make things slightly less sophisticated but more easily repaired then you win on down time.
I visited a MIR simulator on earth. The level of sophistication was very low even by the standards of the time it was built. They had to bodge a whole lot of things to keep it going, but it was relatively easy and they could get proportionally more science done per person than the ISS crew today.
The ISS is understaffed and has been since the beginning. It was planned that there would be an amergency return vehicle that could take a crew of seven down. That was late then scrapped. The only 'life-boat' is a Soyuz. This limits the permanent crew to 3.
A second Soyuz could be added (I believe there are docking facilities for up to three vehicles) but the Russians are currently hard up and they have been getting no extra money of late due to a dispute over Iran.
So we wnd up with up to three very busy people only. Most of their time is for the plumbing, etc.
Regretablly, as the outsoucing company isn't contributing to the bottom line, the real cash available is much smaller. However, having an outsourcing proposal on the table when discussing service-level agreements and costs works wonders.
On Common-Carrier status, this one is easy. You incorporate an ISP as a non-profit but owned by the college. As a single function company, it is easy to have common carrier status. The fact that it only provides services for the college and its students is immaterial.
I don't know about auto-pilots but I have driven real SUVs (Land-rover) seriously off road. For a human being it isn't exactly easy and when there is no track at all to follow, 20MPH can be difficult to maintain. As a human, even with the ground clearance of a real SUV, you are very aware of the danger of catching your oil-sump on a rock (I dinged it multiple times, but was slow enough not to crack it).
I wish you good luck though and please come back here and tell us about it!!!!
I would be very interested if the obfuscation works, perhaps a different test run with no Email addresses in the message but allowing the experimental Email address to be obfuscated in the usual '/.' way.
This sounds interesting, how is having two flavours of library handled? Separate directories?
Definitely a frying Dutchman!!!!
Something like a subscription is better though because it proactively warns you of updates - with apt4rpm you have to seek it out yourself. There is also the problem that unlike RHN (or the similar for enterprises) patches aren't checked so much for compatability with other patches.
Does Linux fully support the mixing of 64-bit and 32-bit code? I guess you would at least have to include both 32 and 64-bit library versions.
I'm aware of natural radiation, and btw, the Welsh get quite a lot of that too from granite. In some parts of the UK (Cornwall and Scotland), false floors are suggested with ventilation to prevent build-up of argon radio-isotopes fron Uranium in the granite.
The thing is that we are talking about probabilities. The argon thing was talked about as having the risk of smoking a packet of cigarretes per day. Not good if you don't smoke, even worse if you do. For a non-smoker, it would knock an average of five years of your life.
These were also used for some remote surveillance systems and beacons.
Off course printing costs a lot more than offset-Litho, but there is no stock for the publisher or shop to worry about.
Yes we still need a referee mechanism (even forgetting the tenure issue, there is still an issue of quality assurance) and an editor/proof-reader to be sure that everything is correctly put together - but it rather changes the publishing business.
Please remember that Donald E. Knuth wrote TeX and METAFONT because of the issues he had with the printing and publiching business. He triggerred a small revolution.
In those days, many people used Unix and VMS or other big systems and had a good idea of the merits of both and the book The Unix Haters Handbook. It is humorous but it makes some valid points. Perhaps it wasn't up to date with all Unix versions at the time, and in the same way can we expect Mr Raymond to be aware of all the goodness lurking somewhere within the Windows code base (there must be some!).
Perhaps Raymond should have reused but praphrased that quote from the forward of The Unix Haters Handbook:
This is a good disclaimer but this was originally written about Unix, meaning specifically closed source versions from vendors like SCO. What 'fixed' Unix, was freeing the programmer from the patents with open sorce versions like BSD and Linux.In the end Raymond is kind of right. Microsoft themselves are having problems getting everyone to upgrade. How many copies of 95 and 98 are out there still? The NT kernel is kind of cool but not everyone has that kind of horsepower.
On the other hand, the file system is completely mapped under /cygdrive, there is access to services and the registry. I don't exactly call that being ignorant of Windows.
Personally, I'm more inclined when doing system/network management thingies to go off in the direction of Perl/Win32 which gives me more than CMD and better implemented than WSH or VBS.
Saddam supported Osama bin Laden
Total nonsense. Before GW2, Saddam and Osmama hated each other about as much as the americans. Maybe there is cooperation now, but definitely not before the war (they were from rival Islamic sects).
WMD
What about the weapons of mass destruction?
Oh, after that they started saying that he wasn't a nice chap (true), but that didn't stop Rummy from doing business with him in the past. Can you blame people for remind Bush and Blair about the reasons they quoted for going to war?
Of course, in Russia, a suitable medical report can be obtained for around $5000 to avoid the draft. This would *never* happen in the US. The price is much too cheap.
France has been traditionally friendly to the Arab states and it has had a long history of doing so. Yes, it sells arms there probably when it shouldn't, but then so do the US (and their arms exports dwarf France's). Their arguments in favour of granting more time to the weapons inspectors seem to have proved correct after all.
I agree that France argued cogently in the UN, but so did others for the war (except GWB, the term cogent can not apply). It just seems the latter were relying too much on spin.