My mobile (Nokia 6230) has blue tooth and is an MP3 player, I even invested in a 1 Gig MMC card for it, however, don't count on Bluetooth for transferring music to the player. For those who don't know, bluetooth is slow. 1Mbit/sec sounds fast until you realize that, in the real world, it is much slower than that due to various factors from non-ideal conditions to the implementation of Bluetooth in your phone (or other device). I transferred songs to my phone using bluetooth and it took so long that I went out and purchased a USB 14 in one card reader and now do it that way. Don't even get me started on movies:) Bluetooth is fine for streaming the music to another device, such as an earpiece/microphone, as you don't care how fast it is so long as it is fast enough for real-time playback. But you don't want to take 5 minutes to transfer a 5 minute long song, you want it to take about 10 seconds (or less) and even the proposed upgrade to 3Mbit/sec will not solve this problem.
Don't get me wrong, bluetooth is nice but it has it's limitations.
This is here in the UK and I have considered subscribing to it, however, the cost is prohibitive. At 75 GBP / month for 1 GB of data transfer included each month, it would be very simple to go over the limit and incure the extrememly high surcharges for each additional MB. A GB sounds like a lot until you do the math. If you use this 4 hours a day to surf the net like you would on a 56k modem is about 100 MB of transfer per day. This is 10 days of usage in a month. Even if you only use it during the week, it is still only 1/2 what you would normally use. With the second GB costing 590 GBP, this is much too costly to use regularly. Also, image paying for that huge load of SPAM we all get on a per megabyte charge.
Your situation sounds like me about 10 years ago. The one thing I can say is to push through the "boring" subjects as quickly as you can. I made the mistake of ignoring them and then had to re-take them, nothing worse than being bored for the second time. The ones you find interesting you will ace without any apparent effort. One thing I can also recommend, find a good advisor and a good school. These two things will keep your attention and also let you take classes you would not normally be allowed to take to help you along. For example, they will sometimes let you take a class that is a Masters level course before you have graduated or even finished the prerequisites for it. Watch for these opportunities and go for it as they will challenge you. Remember, the farther you go in school (and university is no exception) the less "general" topics you will have to take.
"Ask anyone who's ever sat in one, and they will agree" Incorrect! I had one of these for my desk chair for 4 months and it never failed to be uncomfortable for me. After several complaints they brought in an expert to adjust it for me. It still was not anywhere close to comfortable. The company ended up buying me a "regular" office chair. The main reason it was not comfortable is that the saddle or seat or whatever you call it is to narrow for me. Yes, I am your typical coder who is a bit wider than the average person. These chairs were just not designed with us in mind.
I don't know how many of you have ever done the "Egg Drop" in school where you build a device to protect an egg when you drop it from a height, usually the top of the building or some such. I have done that at least twice and learned something each time. Now, for those of you saying "Yeah, Yeah, done that and it was easy", take your laptop computer, put it where the egg was and drop it. Did it survive? Oooh, I'm impressed, now do it from orbit...
If you have a house and are retrofitting it with this system then $15k is a lot of money. However, consider how much more your house will sell for when you do sell (and you will, someday) with a system like this in place. If your house will sell for an additional $10k, then the system only costs $5000. Same thing if you are building new except that if you get the builder to have it installed as part of the house, then the $15k becomes part of your mortgage.
With many (even most) houses near the big cities costing $300,000 - $500,000 that $15,000 doesn't seem like such a big hit. I have a friend who recently bought a new built house and adding a wrap around porch to the house was going to cost an additional $40,000.
Keep it in perspective people.
A plumber filed suit today against Corporate Technologies USA, Inc claiming that he was successful in "cracking" while working on site at Corporate Technologies USA's headquarters.
"I walked in, bent over to set down my toolbox and Bang! cracked on the first try." said Master Plumber William Johnson.
Corporate Technologies USA has refused to comment.
Situation:
New Bionic Computer (Bigger, Better, Faster, Stronger) for the Boss.
Goal:
Move data to new computer
Use old computer as New Bionic Hand-Me-Down Computer for Boss' Secretary
Process:
Backup C Drive of old computer.
Shutdown and remove old computer.
Setup new computer.
Copy all backup data to new computer
Verify Copy worked
Backup Secretary Computer
Shutdown Secretary Computer
Setup New BHMD Computer for Secretary
Repartition Hard drive
Format Hard drive
Install OS (Win98)
Install MS Office
Suddenly Discover that partitions D and E have not been restored to Bosses new computer!!!
Discover backup didn't know about D and E
PANIC!!!
Frantically shut down Secretary's BHMD computer as it's hard drive is where all the bosses data WAS stored.
PANIC some more!!!
Call Drive Savers in California
In a Panic, tell them what happened.
Get reassurance
Tell them you need it ASAP and are fedexing the drive to them overnight.
Panic!
Get call from Drive Savers next afternoon. All data recovered and on secure web site to be downloaded.
Download
Burn CDs
Copy to Boss's new computer.
All is well!!!
This sounds like an add for Drive Savers, and to an extent it is. Really, it's a real life testimony to the fact that sometimes you make mistakes. I was willing to pay anything to get the job done quickly and correctly and that is what I ended up paying, anything. It cost a lot of money and I could have saved a lot of money if I didn't need it fixed "Yesterday". As it was, the boss never new anything was wrong or that his data was ever "missing".
It is possible I could have spent $49 and used Norton to get the data back my self, but it was too important to take the chance of the recovery process that I would use in my ignorance would cause more damage than good.
These percentages are not necessarily true, but it get's the idea across.
Now this may be an advantage or a disadvantage. You may be "Over Qualified" for a position because you will have to be paid to much and the contract cannot support that.
> Another fun trick was to use a standard fax machine with a continuous loop of paper.
Be sure to use black construction paper. If they are using paper fax, the ink/toner will cost much more than the paper very quickly.
Better yet, use a computer and a fax modem.
To be truly cruel, scan a real document (wait for it) and then use Photoshop or some other software to smear the bottom half of the page. Then fax them this. It will make them think something is wrong with their fax machine, especially if you can send it from several different fax machines. (just change the info on your software and dialout from different phone lines). Then report that their machine is broken and watch them panic.
At one point I had too much time on my hands and a hate of Faxed Spam....
The BBC has a story about a scout leader who hiked to the south pole last January. He took his laptop and a satellite phone to keep in touch with his troop. The story mentions that one pitch dark and bitterly cold night he decided to play around with his laptop and overclocked the 1.4 Ghz CPU to 8 Ghz! Can you believe it? He personally wrote up the story, but to help with the slashdot effect, I mirrored it here.
IPv6, once known as "Toaster Net", has officially been renamed "Bullet Net". Every Bullet will have it's own IPv6 address, built in webcam, Fly by Wireless, and will automatically check to see if there is any beverage left in the coffee pot / coke machine.
As was mentioned earlier, regulations need to be followed by professional contractors. I highly recommend this to anyone as it is usually about $50-$75 / drop, less for several in the same location. In the USA it is usually required that you use Plenum cable which is not shielded, but fire resistant when wiring inside the walls. Note again that if you are an individual homeowner doing the work and not a contractor, you won't have an inspector show up unannounced to inspect your work. Remember that if you have it done professionally, it can add to the value of the house when it comes time to sell.
On another note, I recommend using Cat 5e wire or even Cat 6 or 7 (not even sure if they are officially out yet) but Cat 5e is and is about the same cost as Cat 5 but will support Gigabit over copper. Not many homes have need for gigabit speeds yet, but it is worth doing now. Assuming the next few steps are similar, they should be 10 Gb and 100 Gb respectively and the 5e wiring should support the 10 Gb at least.
I agree for a general system situation. In fact, I have done both. I run my servers by wire (as they don't move around) and my laptops via wireless. Most people don't move their TV and Stereo system around much once they get it setup, so I would recommend wires for those as well. The two biggest advantages of Wires vs Wireless are bandwidth and privacy. By using both in your house, it would allow you to sit on the porch surfing the net at full speed (even those of you with 3 Mb ADSL) while several people in the house are watching movies on the Televisions and listening to streaming audio around the house. If you do everything wireless, you will see a huge slowdown when someone starts to watch a movie and/or several people start steaming audio from your server.
If you can, go wired. It has the bandwidth you need for video and with a switch you can handle several servers and clients simultaneously each with it's own 100Mbit connection where with wireless you share bandwidth.
In RAID, More spindles = More Performance
on
RAMdisk RAID?
·
· Score: 1
One of the big issues with RAID today is that drives are so large it is simple to hit your size requirement and still have a RAID that doesn't perform to the required level. This is because most people spec a RAID to have a required size and assume it will meet their performance requirements. Since the performance of a RAID is directly related to the number of drives used in the RAID, they should either use a larger number of smaller capacity drives or use the large capacity drives, but use more of them, even if it exceeds the space requirements for the RAID. Look at any review of RAID controllers and they will test with 2, 4, 8 etc drives and you can see the performance increase with each added set of drives. Even RAID 5, which requires more calculations for each drive added, will only slow the rate of growth not stop it.
How about releasing it with all it's communication protocols, passwords, etc to the public domain. Who knows, there might be an enterprising young genius out there with an array of 120 foot (~40 meter) dishes.;-)
Common Research Cycle:
First figure out how to do it with exotic materials that exhibit the behaviour you want, once you understand how this works, find more mundane (and less toxic) materials to create the consumer product.
Many exotic materials have special behaviours that are great for research and creating devices that work in the lab environment but they often have drawbacks, not the least of which is their toxicity. These materials are also very expensive to produce, as well as dispose of, which will result in a consumer product that is too expensive for your average consumer.
Manufacturers and consumers now look at the entire cost of a product from the initial manufacturing cost or purchase price, right through to the cost of disposing of it. Individual consumers usually don't pay much attention to the latter since they usually have one of an item (most/.ers excepted), however, corporations that often have thousands of each computer or display pay much more attention to things like lifespan and disposal costs. If this product is to come to market as more than a niche player, it needs to have a good ROI and low TCO.
ROI = Return on Investment TCO = Total Cost of Ownership
Slashdot Mirror
My mobile (Nokia 6230) has blue tooth and is an MP3 player, I even invested in a 1 Gig MMC card for it, however, don't count on Bluetooth for transferring music to the player. For those who don't know, bluetooth is slow. 1Mbit/sec sounds fast until you realize that, in the real world, it is much slower than that due to various factors from non-ideal conditions to the implementation of Bluetooth in your phone (or other device). I transferred songs to my phone using bluetooth and it took so long that I went out and purchased a USB 14 in one card reader and now do it that way. Don't even get me started on movies :) Bluetooth is fine for streaming the music to another device, such as an earpiece/microphone, as you don't care how fast it is so long as it is fast enough for real-time playback. But you don't want to take 5 minutes to transfer a 5 minute long song, you want it to take about 10 seconds (or less) and even the proposed upgrade to 3Mbit/sec will not solve this problem.
Don't get me wrong, bluetooth is nice but it has it's limitations.
This is here in the UK and I have considered subscribing to it, however, the cost is prohibitive. At 75 GBP / month for 1 GB of data transfer included each month, it would be very simple to go over the limit and incure the extrememly high surcharges for each additional MB. A GB sounds like a lot until you do the math. If you use this 4 hours a day to surf the net like you would on a 56k modem is about 100 MB of transfer per day. This is 10 days of usage in a month. Even if you only use it during the week, it is still only 1/2 what you would normally use. With the second GB costing 590 GBP, this is much too costly to use regularly. Also, image paying for that huge load of SPAM we all get on a per megabyte charge.
Card Price: GBP 99.00 (US $178)
Monthly: GBP 88.13 (US $158) for 1000MB
Additinal MB: GBP 0.59 (US $1.06)
If they would make the second GB of transfer as cheap as the first, it might be worth it.
How do they know the site is illegal to view without viewing it...
If they view it, they are in violation of the law...
Just a thought...
He was the only person with an AOL screen name NOT receiving spam...
Everyone should legally change their name to either John Doe or Jane Doe.
Your situation sounds like me about 10 years ago. The one thing I can say is to push through the "boring" subjects as quickly as you can. I made the mistake of ignoring them and then had to re-take them, nothing worse than being bored for the second time. The ones you find interesting you will ace without any apparent effort.
One thing I can also recommend, find a good advisor and a good school. These two things will keep your attention and also let you take classes you would not normally be allowed to take to help you along. For example, they will sometimes let you take a class that is a Masters level course before you have graduated or even finished the prerequisites for it. Watch for these opportunities and go for it as they will challenge you.
Remember, the farther you go in school (and university is no exception) the less "general" topics you will have to take.
"Well, I'm off to write them a letter I suggest you do the same"
While you are at it, send them $29.95 in advance for the game. If they receive enough of these, they just might continue development.
"Ask anyone who's ever sat in one, and they will agree" Incorrect! I had one of these for my desk chair for 4 months and it never failed to be uncomfortable for me. After several complaints they brought in an expert to adjust it for me. It still was not anywhere close to comfortable. The company ended up buying me a "regular" office chair. The main reason it was not comfortable is that the saddle or seat or whatever you call it is to narrow for me. Yes, I am your typical coder who is a bit wider than the average person. These chairs were just not designed with us in mind.
Ok, so he should have said -40 degrees and falling.
(if you don't get it, do the math.)
I don't know how many of you have ever done the "Egg Drop" in school where you build a device to protect an egg when you drop it from a height, usually the top of the building or some such. I have done that at least twice and learned something each time. Now, for those of you saying "Yeah, Yeah, done that and it was easy", take your laptop computer, put it where the egg was and drop it. Did it survive? Oooh, I'm impressed, now do it from orbit...
If you have a house and are retrofitting it with this system then $15k is a lot of money. However, consider how much more your house will sell for when you do sell (and you will, someday) with a system like this in place. If your house will sell for an additional $10k, then the system only costs $5000. Same thing if you are building new except that if you get the builder to have it installed as part of the house, then the $15k becomes part of your mortgage.
With many (even most) houses near the big cities costing $300,000 - $500,000 that $15,000 doesn't seem like such a big hit. I have a friend who recently bought a new built house and adding a wrap around porch to the house was going to cost an additional $40,000.
Keep it in perspective people.
A plumber filed suit today against Corporate Technologies USA, Inc claiming that he was successful in "cracking" while working on site at Corporate Technologies USA's headquarters.
"I walked in, bent over to set down my toolbox and Bang! cracked on the first try." said Master Plumber William Johnson.
Corporate Technologies USA has refused to comment.
Situation:
New Bionic Computer (Bigger, Better, Faster, Stronger) for the Boss.
Goal:
Move data to new computer
Use old computer as New Bionic Hand-Me-Down Computer for Boss' Secretary
Process:
Backup C Drive of old computer.
Shutdown and remove old computer.
Setup new computer.
Copy all backup data to new computer
Verify Copy worked
Backup Secretary Computer
Shutdown Secretary Computer
Setup New BHMD Computer for Secretary
Repartition Hard drive
Format Hard drive
Install OS (Win98)
Install MS Office
Suddenly Discover that partitions D and E have not been restored to Bosses new computer!!!
Discover backup didn't know about D and E
PANIC!!!
Frantically shut down Secretary's BHMD computer as it's hard drive is where all the bosses data WAS stored.
PANIC some more!!!
Call Drive Savers in California
In a Panic, tell them what happened.
Get reassurance
Tell them you need it ASAP and are fedexing the drive to them overnight.
Panic!
Get call from Drive Savers next afternoon. All data recovered and on secure web site to be downloaded.
Download
Burn CDs
Copy to Boss's new computer.
All is well!!!
This sounds like an add for Drive Savers, and to an extent it is. Really, it's a real life testimony to the fact that sometimes you make mistakes. I was willing to pay anything to get the job done quickly and correctly and that is what I ended up paying, anything. It cost a lot of money and I could have saved a lot of money if I didn't need it fixed "Yesterday". As it was, the boss never new anything was wrong or that his data was ever "missing".
It is possible I could have spent $49 and used Norton to get the data back my self, but it was too important to take the chance of the recovery process that I would use in my ignorance would cause more damage than good.
Contracts with the US goverment have a pay scale set into them.
Degree Required Position:
Bachelors Degree = $Salary
Master Degree = $Salary + 25%
Doctorate = $Salary + 50%
These percentages are not necessarily true, but it get's the idea across.
Now this may be an advantage or a disadvantage. You may be "Over Qualified" for a position because you will have to be paid to much and the contract cannot support that.
> Another fun trick was to use a standard fax machine with a continuous loop of paper.
Be sure to use black construction paper. If they are using paper fax, the ink/toner will cost much more than the paper very quickly.
Better yet, use a computer and a fax modem.
To be truly cruel, scan a real document (wait for it) and then use Photoshop or some other software to smear the bottom half of the page. Then fax them this. It will make them think something is wrong with their fax machine, especially if you can send it from several different fax machines. (just change the info on your software and dialout from different phone lines). Then report that their machine is broken and watch them panic.
At one point I had too much time on my hands and a hate of Faxed Spam....
The BBC has a story about a scout leader who hiked to the south pole last January. He took his laptop and a satellite phone to keep in touch with his troop. The story mentions that one pitch dark and bitterly cold night he decided to play around with his laptop and overclocked the 1.4 Ghz CPU to 8 Ghz! Can you believe it? He personally wrote up the story, but to help with the slashdot effect, I mirrored it here.
IPv6, once known as "Toaster Net", has officially been renamed "Bullet Net". Every Bullet will have it's own IPv6 address, built in webcam, Fly by Wireless, and will automatically check to see if there is any beverage left in the coffee pot / coke machine.
Sounds like a Unreal/Quake/FPSoC come to life, all they need to do now is add "Force Feedback"... oh wait, they have...
As was mentioned earlier, regulations need to be followed by professional contractors. I highly recommend this to anyone as it is usually about $50-$75 / drop, less for several in the same location. In the USA it is usually required that you use Plenum cable which is not shielded, but fire resistant when wiring inside the walls. Note again that if you are an individual homeowner doing the work and not a contractor, you won't have an inspector show up unannounced to inspect your work. Remember that if you have it done professionally, it can add to the value of the house when it comes time to sell.
On another note, I recommend using Cat 5e wire or even Cat 6 or 7 (not even sure if they are officially out yet) but Cat 5e is and is about the same cost as Cat 5 but will support Gigabit over copper. Not many homes have need for gigabit speeds yet, but it is worth doing now. Assuming the next few steps are similar, they should be 10 Gb and 100 Gb respectively and the 5e wiring should support the 10 Gb at least.
I agree for a general system situation. In fact, I have done both. I run my servers by wire (as they don't move around) and my laptops via wireless. Most people don't move their TV and Stereo system around much once they get it setup, so I would recommend wires for those as well. The two biggest advantages of Wires vs Wireless are bandwidth and privacy. By using both in your house, it would allow you to sit on the porch surfing the net at full speed (even those of you with 3 Mb ADSL) while several people in the house are watching movies on the Televisions and listening to streaming audio around the house. If you do everything wireless, you will see a huge slowdown when someone starts to watch a movie and/or several people start steaming audio from your server.
If you can, go wired. It has the bandwidth you need for video and with a switch you can handle several servers and clients simultaneously each with it's own 100Mbit connection where with wireless you share bandwidth.
One of the big issues with RAID today is that drives are so large it is simple to hit your size requirement and still have a RAID that doesn't perform to the required level. This is because most people spec a RAID to have a required size and assume it will meet their performance requirements. Since the performance of a RAID is directly related to the number of drives used in the RAID, they should either use a larger number of smaller capacity drives or use the large capacity drives, but use more of them, even if it exceeds the space requirements for the RAID. Look at any review of RAID controllers and they will test with 2, 4, 8 etc drives and you can see the performance increase with each added set of drives. Even RAID 5, which requires more calculations for each drive added, will only slow the rate of growth not stop it.
How about releasing it with all it's communication protocols, passwords, etc to the public domain. Who knows, there might be an enterprising young genius out there with an array of 120 foot (~40 meter) dishes. ;-)
User Headspace and Timing Error
Say this one quickly and assuredly and they will never get it.
Common Research Cycle:
/.ers excepted), however, corporations that often have thousands of each computer or display pay much more attention to things like lifespan and disposal costs. If this product is to come to market as more than a niche player, it needs to have a good ROI and low TCO.
First figure out how to do it with exotic materials that exhibit the behaviour you want, once you understand how this works, find more mundane (and less toxic) materials to create the consumer product.
Many exotic materials have special behaviours that are great for research and creating devices that work in the lab environment but they often have drawbacks, not the least of which is their toxicity. These materials are also very expensive to produce, as well as dispose of, which will result in a consumer product that is too expensive for your average consumer.
Manufacturers and consumers now look at the entire cost of a product from the initial manufacturing cost or purchase price, right through to the cost of disposing of it. Individual consumers usually don't pay much attention to the latter since they usually have one of an item (most
ROI = Return on Investment
TCO = Total Cost of Ownership