Heh. I've seen the bills for those "outdated desktop with some software installed". You would not know they were outdated...
SMSCs _are_ expensive, regarless of what the/. crowd may think. In fact, every component of a telco network is more expensive because of the "carrier grade" moniker.
SMS is a good deal for the cellular carriers. In the beginning, it simply used the control channel to send messages back and forth, with a single, non-redundant SMSC.
All of a sudden, the service took off and costs increased (expansions in the control channel, adding cells, increasing bandwidth). Still, the profit margin is very healthy.
With all this considered, paying 10E-2 US$ for a SMS (actually twice, sender and receiver) is too much. The reasoning here is that the telco wants to force you to get a package of SMS, so that the money is on their pocket upfront.
Those on strike are the management level people who run the oil industry, not the workers.
This is simply, not true. A very large proportion of the oil industry and most of its contractors have joined the strike. Those that didn't join, but had to stop anyway because couldn't deliver due to the stopping of the industry, are now without a job as the government has set its sights in firing every possible employee.
The people they're bringing to fill in for the missing ones is so uncompetent, that today, more than 30 days after the strike, they're not paying salaries because the payroll applications cannot be started.
As a funny note (if this can be funny at all), the disorganization is so large, that there are employees that have been fired twice in the same week as well as government designated employees who has been fired by the same government.
What you're saying about the banks is partially untrue. In fact, the banks joined the strike a few weeks ago, although with a limited operating schedule instead of simply shutting down.
As of today, venezuelans are subjected to not being able to move (or access!) foreign currency. The reason why the foreign currency is so necessary has to do with the lack of confidence in the government.
This is a vicious circle kind of thing, where the government keeps screwing things up and the population responds by taking its few savings out of the country. Certainly the national strikes have had a large influence...
Just going out on a limb here... Do you guys think it is possible to scan the books and store them somewhere so that an open source client such as Seti@Home's can work on the pages?
I guess this would tend to deal with the most expensive part of the process IMO, the typing. Of course, storage and scanning of the pages is still an issue.
Produce an ad that is so good, that you actually want to see it. This is tricky but I can only think of it as an incentive for ad producers and media houses to work a bit harder in the problem.
Something that comes to mind as an example is the series of Bud ads. Certainly there are other examples.
Betacam (SP/Pro/etc) is hardly the same thing as Beta. Additionally to the tape speed, the angle of the heads has been changed and the encoding is different. Granted, it is the best analog camera you can carry for professional work but the size of the cassette along with the weight of the transport, housing, etc. makes it a pain to use it.
However, I intended to include it in my response (but forgot to...)
Betacam Digital is a different story. It has more than 500 lines of resolution and provides superb video quality... for a price:)
I think many people here is confusing some of the following terms
Beta - An old and now discontinued form of helical scan tape that was intended for the comsumer market. It was discontinued in the 80's IIRC. It degraded faster than VHS and was generally less reliable, but YMMV.
Video8 / Hi8 - Tape formats that were deveoped for the consumer market. Video8 provides slightly higher resolution/quality than standard VHS. Hi8 is a higher quality. To some (myself not included) is geared for semi-professional use. Recently it has been used for consumer-grade camcorders. It has better line-count than Video8, thus better quality.
Super8 - An 8mm "chemical" movie tape used by traditional projectors. I don't think this is even produced in these days.
D8 - Helical scan tape similar (in form factor) to 8mm tapes such as Video8 and Hi8. It uses digital recording techniques to improve on the line-count, producing excellent quality. It is targeted at consumer and semi-professional use. Also known as DV.
MiniDV - Similar to D8, but uses a tape cassette with a form factor compatible with a DAT tape (4mm). Provides (roughly?) the same quality as D8 with a smaller form factor.
MicroDV - Proprietary tape system by Sony® which stores video in MPEG-2 on a tape smaller than a MiniDV.
It all boils down to which precedence does the treaty receive, compared with your local constitution and local law.
For instance, if your local country grants you the right to parody, can the treaty take that away because other country does not recognize this right?
IANAL, but normally traties only apply as long as your constitutional rights and warranties are not breached. I suppose most countries would also give higher precedence to their local laws than to this convention.
I like the idea of 'serving' the MD5 checksum via DNS by calculating it on the fly.
Something like
start.offset.version.neutral-domain-name.org
will work beautifully. (fuckaol.int won't as it can be reclaimed by AOL using a domain dispute policy, just as in the Guinness case).
I have a fully-operational DNS server written in Perl that can be configured to do exactly this, calculating the required checksum from images of the aim.exe binaries stored there. I don't think that storing all the possible MD5 hashes for the different versions can do the trick, as it will increase the ammount of "horsepower" we would need.
If someone volunteers the server + bandwidth (and someone gives me a hand with any required IM protocol details), I'll set this up.
I'm outside the US, so I couldn't care less about the copyright/trademarks/whatever there might be around the AOL-IM protocols/applications.
Slashdot Mirror
There are tamper-proof or tamper-envelopes that could make this safer.
Heh. I've seen the bills for those "outdated desktop with some software installed". You would not know they were outdated...
SMSCs _are_ expensive, regarless of what the /. crowd may think. In fact, every component of a telco network is more expensive because of the "carrier grade" moniker.
SMS is a good deal for the cellular carriers. In the beginning, it simply used the control channel to send messages back and forth, with a single, non-redundant SMSC.
All of a sudden, the service took off and costs increased (expansions in the control channel, adding cells, increasing bandwidth). Still, the profit margin is very healthy.
With all this considered, paying 10E-2 US$ for a SMS (actually twice, sender and receiver) is too much. The reasoning here is that the telco wants to force you to get a package of SMS, so that the money is on their pocket upfront.
And yes, I do come from a telco.
And if you get very, very stuck, you can throw the darn computer in the fire!!! :)
Sorry, couldn't resist
-lem
This is simply, not true. A very large proportion of the oil industry and most of its contractors have joined the strike. Those that didn't join, but had to stop anyway because couldn't deliver due to the stopping of the industry, are now without a job as the government has set its sights in firing every possible employee.
The people they're bringing to fill in for the missing ones is so uncompetent, that today, more than 30 days after the strike, they're not paying salaries because the payroll applications cannot be started.
As a funny note (if this can be funny at all), the disorganization is so large, that there are employees that have been fired twice in the same week as well as government designated employees who has been fired by the same government.
Regards.
-lem
What you're saying about the banks is partially untrue. In fact, the banks joined the strike a few weeks ago, although with a limited operating schedule instead of simply shutting down.
As of today, venezuelans are subjected to not being able to move (or access!) foreign currency. The reason why the foreign currency is so necessary has to do with the lack of confidence in the government.
This is a vicious circle kind of thing, where the government keeps screwing things up and the population responds by taking its few savings out of the country. Certainly the national strikes have had a large influence...
Regards.
-lem
Just going out on a limb here... Do you guys think it is possible to scan the books and store them somewhere so that an open source client such as Seti@Home's can work on the pages?
I guess this would tend to deal with the most expensive part of the process IMO, the typing. Of course, storage and scanning of the pages is still an issue.
Just my 2 cents...
[Insert the obligatory joke about /. slashdotting this server too] :)
Produce an ad that is so good, that you actually want to see it. This is tricky but I can only think of it as an incentive for ad producers and media houses to work a bit harder in the problem.
Something that comes to mind as an example is the series of Bud ads. Certainly there are other examples.
Just my 10E-3 cents...
Betacam (SP/Pro/etc) is hardly the same thing as Beta. Additionally to the tape speed, the angle of the heads has been changed and the encoding is different. Granted, it is the best analog camera you can carry for professional work but the size of the cassette along with the weight of the transport, housing, etc. makes it a pain to use it.
:)
However, I intended to include it in my response (but forgot to...)
Betacam Digital is a different story. It has more than 500 lines of resolution and provides superb video quality... for a price
Beta - An old and now discontinued form of helical scan tape that was intended for the comsumer market. It was discontinued in the 80's IIRC. It degraded faster than VHS and was generally less reliable, but YMMV.
Video8 / Hi8 - Tape formats that were deveoped for the consumer market. Video8 provides slightly higher resolution/quality than standard VHS. Hi8 is a higher quality. To some (myself not included) is geared for semi-professional use. Recently it has been used for consumer-grade camcorders. It has better line-count than Video8, thus better quality.
Super8 - An 8mm "chemical" movie tape used by traditional projectors. I don't think this is even produced in these days.
D8 - Helical scan tape similar (in form factor) to 8mm tapes such as Video8 and Hi8. It uses digital recording techniques to improve on the line-count, producing excellent quality. It is targeted at consumer and semi-professional use. Also known as DV.
MiniDV - Similar to D8, but uses a tape cassette with a form factor compatible with a DAT tape (4mm). Provides (roughly?) the same quality as D8 with a smaller form factor.
MicroDV - Proprietary tape system by Sony® which stores video in MPEG-2 on a tape smaller than a MiniDV.
Hope this helps.
For instance, if your local country grants you the right to parody, can the treaty take that away because other country does not recognize this right?
IANAL, but normally traties only apply as long as your constitutional rights and warranties are not breached. I suppose most countries would also give higher precedence to their local laws than to this convention.
However, I doubt the differences in that kind of data are enough to justify the Linux performance by itself.
I have a fully-operational DNS server written in Perl that can be configured to do exactly this, calculating the required checksum from images of the aim.exe binaries stored there. I don't think that storing all the possible MD5 hashes for the different versions can do the trick, as it will increase the ammount of "horsepower" we would need.
If someone volunteers the server + bandwidth (and someone gives me a hand with any required IM protocol details), I'll set this up.
I'm outside the US, so I couldn't care less about the copyright/trademarks/whatever there might be around the AOL-IM protocols/applications.
Regards.
-lem