Intriging idea but if you run a sweat shop in Romania. You then have to either pay their taxes and follow their regulations or you have to pay bribes. These get expensive, because there is no open market in corruption.
In my limited experience of outsourcing to lesser developed economies is that it is very difficult to avoid paying off officials. This, is actually illegal under the FCPA. If the FCPA was actually applied, then the real costs of offshore manufacturing/development would be rather more obvious.
I work with trading systems. There are a lot of things you can implement cheaply and efficiently enough such as the forms around trading. However everything in the price broadcast, order and execution chain needs to be fast. It doesn't matter if your code is 1% slower than the other guys because he will get the deals and you won't.
The correct solution is to code everything out of the performance critical loop in whatver language is easy and cheap to work with, and then you write what actually matters in the fastest and most efficient way. Actually for the easy and cheap, you can find scripting languages like Perl, Python or Ruby are as good as Java if not better. Java is often a little faster though (but not always).
What Java does have is the ability to run on multiple client platforms, otherwise you have to roll out specific binaries. The joke is for serious applications, your Java often has to call down through JNI to some special stuff that is platform specific anyway so you lose that advantage.
We used to have users doin g documentation with Interleaf (a professional page-layout type publishing program) and running CAD applications and we could squeeze 4 X-terminals comfortably down a 64Kb/s line to the server.
Actually Meteorites are sort of potato shaped
on
Meteor Over Midwest
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· Score: 1
because they need to be significantly larger before their own gravitation can round them off (through impacts with smaller objects, etc).
Try gnucash. The price is right and it is really quite flexible. The documentation could be better, but that is always something that lags a little for free programs.
they may not actually be worth very much, but gnucash will certainly keep account of them and tell you how little they are worth with the portfolio monitoring system.
After struggling to get VAT working with gnucash, I found that yes it was all there. It is just not documented very well.
WIth Linux, we have the man/info pages, we have the docs in the kernel tree but what really helps are the howtos. This is what some people call task orientated documentation. So rather than having to look at a number of different places, I can look at a single howto for, say CD-recording.
We sort of have a simple howto in the form of the tutorial for personal finance. As you say, conversion notes from Quicken and MS Money would help, probably for European users, a howto for VAT would be nice as well. The functionality is there, but sometimes it is interesting to find it.
Oh, so we set up a telegraph network, or semaphores then?
Bell came into an environment were long distance communications already were in use. One of the non-military uses at the time was the trading and transportation of commodities (incl. consummables).
I though that Iridium is now used by the military, and that it was no longer being marketed for ciillian users. The alternative is Inmarsat. It works, the sets are somewhat bigger (size of a small briefcase) but it isn't cheap.
The thing with a standard mobile system is that it is relatively easy to roll-out, especially in the flatter parts of Iraq. All you need is towers, equipment and power. The towers link to each other by microwave in any area and you start by covering the big cities.
The issue is to ensure that all involved with rebuilding the future infrastructure have good telecommunications so stuff gets delivered and to the right place.
Aid coordinators generally have vehicles with HF transceivers (VHF and UHF don't go far enough). Unfortunately they aren't portable and in any case, an HF network is far more difficult to manage many users than on a mobile phone system. VHF or UHF is normally used for handhelds used by aid workers within a relatively small area.
To get a basic mobile phone system into somewhere like Baghdad after the war could be done in a matter of months, assuming the rest of the infrastructure (power and land-lines) continue. The capacity wouldn't be high (big cells) but that is all that is need to start with. Cell size reduction is normal in any case as a network grows.
Some US money will be used to kick-start the process, but this will be as a loan. The reconstruction will be funded by the oil for food program. regrettably that is currently in the hands of the UN, but the US knows how to deal with them.
It should be noted that Motorola also are in the GSM business. However forgetting the modulation (CDMA is better), the GSM system of caller-pays and roaming is much more effective. GSM Phase 3 is CDMA type modulation anyway.
To deliver food or mdecine, you need infrastructure. One of the vital items of infrastructure is good comms. HF can hack it for vehicles, but walkie talkies are limited in range. Mobiles work well because they need a minimum of fixed infrastructure.
To say they need food and medecine may be correct, but without boring stuff like roads, bridges and communications, distribution becomes impossible.
Sorry, but due to the design limitation of your 1965 Ford, we are unable to retrofit your car to fix a recently-found problem in the braking system.
More linke your 1996 Ford only lasts four years, after that, we refuse to maintain it.
Third-party companies may provide small fixes that can help alleviate
Unlike car manufacturers we do not publish full design information or permit reverse engineering. Not only are you on your own, we'll sue your ass off if you even ty to fix the problem yourself.
MS makes it clear on their Product Life Cycle pages what support they plan to give for all products
Where was that timescale when I bought NT 4.0? In theory anyone can still drive a Ford Model-T, not many spare parts for those around. The interesting thing is that the product can be completely reverse engineered and replacement parts produced by anyone. This is where the software vs auto analogy really breaks down. And heck, I own my auto, but I do not own a Microsoft OS, I only license it.
Actually a client of mine does get 10yr support commitments on any given release level of its critical software. Suffice to say, Win2K isn't permitted anywhere near that critical area. I understand DOD gets 20yrs.
You won't miss either show, both are subject to multiple reruns!!!!
I was just commenting that a show that is flexible and can change its format seems to be able to last longer. Inidentally, I think that Dr. Who went through eight 'incarnations' and then each doctor had multiple sets of companions.
The Dr and the companions drove the show to the point where it could vary its audience. The show could vary its story arcs from historical drama to hard sci-fi with a bit of fantasy thrown in. The BBC does a lot of historical drama so good sets and costumes can be 'borrowed' from their stores.
A show like Farscape is more constricted, however it continued to be inventive within its format. It should have been allowed to run to the full five seasons and I think everyone would have been happy. Then it could have been allowed to finish properly, with maybe a few movies later.
Farscape is an interesting and ambitious show. Yes, it frightens off some viewers but captures some from groups with potentially high spending power that aren't easily reached by other television.
I don't know about you, but I find a lot of the other current Sci-Fi shows rather lame and only Farscape has really held my attention since ST:DS9. Becasue of plot complexities, I think that I have seen 100% of Farscape but I know I didn't see all of DS9.
Of course, I could never condone file-sharing - but you will find Kazaa-lite and eMule are your friends. These are the spyware/adware free variants of Kazaa and eDonkey2000. Of course, I wouldn't say anything about the XVid version being the best on quality at 350MB/episode although there is a 450MB/ep version as an mpg.
OTOH, I live in a Farscape desert and wlthough a local channel tried it, they killed it off with bad scheduling.
However try to get the DVD's when you can. They are slightly longer as they contain a few minutes of material that was 'lost' in the final production edit to fit within the time slot.
they ended up with a firefight destroying all the main protagonists. Blake, incidently exited early on (around series 2). As good a way as any for a series to end if you don't want to be caught with infinite returns. Note there are some echoes of Blakes 7 in Farscape (i don't just mean Grayza's chest being compared with Servalan's).
OTOH, that other Sci-Fi scion, Dr Who survived by reinventing itself many times over. It was much more flexible because even the star could be changed. The format could be varied depending upon the budget. A show like Farscape isn't a to produce (their make-up budget has to be way beyond ST:Enterprise's).
Others like B5 were relatively cheap but purely because the producer knew and used every short cut and still managed to do something good. They were even rendering on Ataris!!!
Citrix is a better hack than VNC is, after all they have the Windows source. However it is still a hack and has a relatively large overhead associated with the graphics on the server. Apps stay on the server, and it seems that a lot of the graphics happens there as well. If you want to max out a Citrix server, just scroll through text quickly. X has its problems as well, but first of all, it works very nicely over lower speed links and its performanc seems less uneven.
If you want pervesion though, try running Hummingbird eXceed on the server with a Citrix session to the client (a heavily unused 1.6GHz P3). Running a client server system over a client server system isn't a very good idea. However it was apparently the suggestion of a well known consultancy company.
There was no change as the cancellation only happened at the end of filming. I think the edit changed slighly for the intro and the voiceover stated "And Finally on Farscape". This was the planned cliff-hanger. Note the wording, they were to be "neutralised for examination". This implies that they have been scanned. There must be a way they can be reconstructed from the scan. Even though, all we saw was a pile of dust and a ring.
Henson will do a followup, that is guranteed. I don't really want anime, but a movie or mini-series could be an answer. The actors are great and you forget that Rygel and Pilot are just puppets. It would be a shame to lose them or only to hear their voices.
For those of you enjoying this, the final episode of series 4. Farscape ended the series with their usual cliff hanger. The crew decided against changes.
For those of you feeling a little frustrated, here is a list of Farscape swear-words. Ideal if you ever meet a Sci-Fi executive.
I'm in foreign parts so I have been watching it via emule. I saw the BBC version and not only was there the "To be Continued", after a bugger of a cliff-hanger ending, the voice over then told viewers that it was the end and referred the viewers to the Farscape website. Viewers found the BBC Farscape Forum website. After taking out the forum, viewers then went over to the main Save Farscape website and then overloaded their forum too.
The interesting thing is that the cost of a GPS system is immense, but with mass production of the receiver chips, the marginal cost is minute. In fact, it is probably cheaper to build the bomb than to launch a GPS constellation.
Somehow, I don't think there would be such a free market in nuclear weapons because an attack on America with a North Korean bomb, would probably bring retribution on the producer, not just the user.
The most important use for high accuracy is in targeting weapons by GPS, what the US Air Force is doing in Iraq this very day...
For a nuclear weapon, you don't really need a CEP of 50 metres or better unless you are trying to hit a missile silo. Even for a few hundred Kg of HE, a CEP of 10 metres or better is fine.
However surveyors will not be using handheld Garmins to do their work anytime soon. (Indeed, I do not believe that GPS data is valid for a legal survey)
It depends on what you mean by legal. I know people who lay roads by GPS. The receivers they use for benchmarking (the key anchor point for a survey) are static things. A true survey benchmark is a point which has been extremely accurately located. The alternative to benchmarks (which are normally in built up areas) are trig points (also located down to the mm level). There are many cases where these benchmarks are just not available, so reliance is made on a GPS reference station.
They have used SA signals before, but the average out the errors by waiting for multiple sattelite passes. In the end it is down to cm level. After the benchmark, surveying uses mostly optical techniques. This is slow. I do know that some people have used multi-pass GPS to establish a local DGPS signal to give corrected signals to portable receivers.
Handheld GPS doesn't go to the cm level at the moment. It will do, but not with the current GPS satellite system. Backpack systems can and do. For example, some of the searchers for the Columbia debris were using the backpack units to fix the location.
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In my limited experience of outsourcing to lesser developed economies is that it is very difficult to avoid paying off officials. This, is actually illegal under the FCPA. If the FCPA was actually applied, then the real costs of offshore manufacturing/development would be rather more obvious.
The correct solution is to code everything out of the performance critical loop in whatver language is easy and cheap to work with, and then you write what actually matters in the fastest and most efficient way. Actually for the easy and cheap, you can find scripting languages like Perl, Python or Ruby are as good as Java if not better. Java is often a little faster though (but not always).
What Java does have is the ability to run on multiple client platforms, otherwise you have to roll out specific binaries. The joke is for serious applications, your Java often has to call down through JNI to some special stuff that is platform specific anyway so you lose that advantage.
We used to have users doin g documentation with Interleaf (a professional page-layout type publishing program) and running CAD applications and we could squeeze 4 X-terminals comfortably down a 64Kb/s line to the server.
OTOH, aren't VW beatles sort of potato shaped?
Try gnucash. The price is right and it is really quite flexible. The documentation could be better, but that is always something that lags a little for free programs.
they may not actually be worth very much, but gnucash will certainly keep account of them and tell you how little they are worth with the portfolio monitoring system.
WIth Linux, we have the man/info pages, we have the docs in the kernel tree but what really helps are the howtos. This is what some people call task orientated documentation. So rather than having to look at a number of different places, I can look at a single howto for, say CD-recording.
We sort of have a simple howto in the form of the tutorial for personal finance. As you say, conversion notes from Quicken and MS Money would help, probably for European users, a howto for VAT would be nice as well. The functionality is there, but sometimes it is interesting to find it.
Bell came into an environment were long distance communications already were in use. One of the non-military uses at the time was the trading and transportation of commodities (incl. consummables).
The thing with a standard mobile system is that it is relatively easy to roll-out, especially in the flatter parts of Iraq. All you need is towers, equipment and power. The towers link to each other by microwave in any area and you start by covering the big cities.
The issue is to ensure that all involved with rebuilding the future infrastructure have good telecommunications so stuff gets delivered and to the right place.
Aid coordinators generally have vehicles with HF transceivers (VHF and UHF don't go far enough). Unfortunately they aren't portable and in any case, an HF network is far more difficult to manage many users than on a mobile phone system. VHF or UHF is normally used for handhelds used by aid workers within a relatively small area.
To get a basic mobile phone system into somewhere like Baghdad after the war could be done in a matter of months, assuming the rest of the infrastructure (power and land-lines) continue. The capacity wouldn't be high (big cells) but that is all that is need to start with. Cell size reduction is normal in any case as a network grows.
It should be noted that Motorola also are in the GSM business. However forgetting the modulation (CDMA is better), the GSM system of caller-pays and roaming is much more effective. GSM Phase 3 is CDMA type modulation anyway.
To say they need food and medecine may be correct, but without boring stuff like roads, bridges and communications, distribution becomes impossible.
I was just commenting that a show that is flexible and can change its format seems to be able to last longer. Inidentally, I think that Dr. Who went through eight 'incarnations' and then each doctor had multiple sets of companions. The Dr and the companions drove the show to the point where it could vary its audience. The show could vary its story arcs from historical drama to hard sci-fi with a bit of fantasy thrown in. The BBC does a lot of historical drama so good sets and costumes can be 'borrowed' from their stores.
A show like Farscape is more constricted, however it continued to be inventive within its format. It should have been allowed to run to the full five seasons and I think everyone would have been happy. Then it could have been allowed to finish properly, with maybe a few movies later.
Farscape is an interesting and ambitious show. Yes, it frightens off some viewers but captures some from groups with potentially high spending power that aren't easily reached by other television.
I don't know about you, but I find a lot of the other current Sci-Fi shows rather lame and only Farscape has really held my attention since ST:DS9. Becasue of plot complexities, I think that I have seen 100% of Farscape but I know I didn't see all of DS9.
OTOH, I live in a Farscape desert and wlthough a local channel tried it, they killed it off with bad scheduling.
However try to get the DVD's when you can. They are slightly longer as they contain a few minutes of material that was 'lost' in the final production edit to fit within the time slot.
OTOH, that other Sci-Fi scion, Dr Who survived by reinventing itself many times over. It was much more flexible because even the star could be changed. The format could be varied depending upon the budget. A show like Farscape isn't a to produce (their make-up budget has to be way beyond ST:Enterprise's).
Others like B5 were relatively cheap but purely because the producer knew and used every short cut and still managed to do something good. They were even rendering on Ataris!!!
gives me visions of the goatse.cx guy. I can't exactly say the association is pleasant (unlike the Farscape babes, who definitely are).
If you want pervesion though, try running Hummingbird eXceed on the server with a Citrix session to the client (a heavily unused 1.6GHz P3). Running a client server system over a client server system isn't a very good idea. However it was apparently the suggestion of a well known consultancy company.
Henson will do a followup, that is guranteed. I don't really want anime, but a movie or mini-series could be an answer. The actors are great and you forget that Rygel and Pilot are just puppets. It would be a shame to lose them or only to hear their voices.
For those of you feeling a little frustrated, here is a list of Farscape swear-words. Ideal if you ever meet a Sci-Fi executive.
Sorry that last reference should have been www.savefarscape.com, I didn't check the pasted link.
I'm in foreign parts so I have been watching it via emule. I saw the BBC version and not only was there the "To be Continued", after a bugger of a cliff-hanger ending, the voice over then told viewers that it was the end and referred the viewers to the Farscape website. Viewers found the BBC Farscape Forum website. After taking out the forum, viewers then went over to the main Save Farscape website and then overloaded their forum too.
Somehow, I don't think there would be such a free market in nuclear weapons because an attack on America with a North Korean bomb, would probably bring retribution on the producer, not just the user.
They have used SA signals before, but the average out the errors by waiting for multiple sattelite passes. In the end it is down to cm level. After the benchmark, surveying uses mostly optical techniques. This is slow. I do know that some people have used multi-pass GPS to establish a local DGPS signal to give corrected signals to portable receivers.
Handheld GPS doesn't go to the cm level at the moment. It will do, but not with the current GPS satellite system. Backpack systems can and do. For example, some of the searchers for the Columbia debris were using the backpack units to fix the location.
In either case, your tax dollars end up in the Cayman Islands or Switzerland.