I took a good look over the Objectives By Exam and it looks rather comprehensive. I can see MANY things in there that are reasonbly difficult, diverse in their nature, not necessarily intuitive, and require some serious study.
And by giving out this list, it gives you a decent idea of what to expect. And knowing what to expect means you know what to learn if you want to succeed in getting this certification. It also gives people a set of objectives to learn even if they don't bother going through with the certification, which IMHO is a "good thing".
There are always going to be wanna-be's without motivation, frauds and people that will help them, because it is profitable to do so. It's just a matter of recognising them, and providing a detailed enough course to discourage the wanna-be's without the motivation, and the frauds from even trying. Much beyond that is futile at best, and at worst, damages the community as much, if not more, than the wanna-be's and frauds do in the first place.
As for the cost, well, if you want to succeed, you should expect to pay something, and $100 US is nothing compared to the courses I've seen on some products. Just because the software is free, doesn't mean the hard earned hours of the testers and the like should also be free.
As an aside, the only question I haven't seen yet in a Linux Certification is "When not to use Linux". Sure the list would be small, but hey, if you are true professional, you realise that no single product can be suited to everything. *grin*
This actually could be very useful for fluid dynamics tests. Use NanoFuel and NanoFlash, and when the fluid hits hard turns or corners it will glow. This can highlight areas where there is problems with the flow of water.
Could also be useful for tracing liquids that make it into the sewer systems. Use NanoLight in the chemical source, and add NanoFuel in specific areas to track and trace where the leak is.
Wonder what sort of temperature range these things can stand.... Anyone?
Unfortunately it doesn't look like any of this stuff could be used in plastics or paint in place of dangerous chemicals like phosphorus and radio-active elements....
Which is a real pity. I could use a glow-in-the-dark PC case! Anyone know of any safe chemicals or paint?
There are a few stations that already support RDS in Australia (eg: TripleJ), and systems are available here that support the RDS standard. It's been running here quite a while, it's just that not many radio stations have picked it up. I have already accidently tuned into one radio station here that was transmitting someone elses RDS signal. It didn't last long though, they vanished pretty quick.
RDS is a very old technology, and it's a real wonder this hasn't happened before. RDS is carried on a "subchannel" on the FM signal, and digital data such as the station name, time signal, etc, is transmitted. My car syncronises the inbuilt clock with that of the radio station every 2-3 minutes. (It did take TripleJ about a month to adjust to daylight savings however).
But it's not hard to fake another stations RDS signature. If a station transmits someone elses RDS signature, and your radio is set to tune to the strongest station with the same RDS sig, well.. you can guess the result I think. The original idea is to allow for movement between different locations/states that have the same station broadcasting on a different frequency, and having your car radio follow the signal automatically and seamlessly. It's just an abuse of the system that no one bothered to cater for, and even if they did, it'd be hard to implement, as the data is all one way. You could capture the data and simply re-send it, or even receive their signal and then re-transmit it. It may have even been considered, and deemed simply not worth the trouble of worrying about it.
If anything, this will lead to more publicity for pirate stations, but that also means that the people designated for tracking down pirate radio stations might hear about it a lot sooner than normal. And if they have a list of authorised frequencies that a particular RDS signal is transmitted on, then it's just a matter of singling out the ones that have a valid RDS signal but the wrong frequency. For the pirates, I'd count this as a two-edged sword.
At the time the basis of the current calander was being "thought out", there was a monk (can't remember his name) who translated the roman system into a newer system, which is the basis of the Gregorian calander in use today. One of the reasons for this, was "Why should the church use a calander based on the rule of a Roman Emperor?" They finally decided on the year of christ's birth as the founding date. But they didn't use the current numbering system, they used roman numerals. How do you express 0 in roman numerals?
The romans had no concept of how to represent "nothing" so they took christ's birth as the year 1 AD. If you want to get really deep into this, you will also find that the date of christ's birth, the date of his death, and the actual number of years that had passed since his death to the time of the creation of the AD system was inaccurately calculated, due to misunderstandings of how lunar time, and siderial time interrelated, as well as simple "miscalculations".
However, even then, the calander was not 100% correct. Leap years were added, (to account for the drift caused by the fact that the rotation of the earth on it's axis, and the rotation of the earth around the sun do not mesh terribly well, there being approximately a 0.25 day difference) and then they were further resolved. The final rule (which is very accurate over large numbers of years) states that a leap year occurs..
Every year evenly divisable by 4,
Unless it is a year ending in 00 (Century),
Unless that year is also divisable by 400.
On top of this, you have leap seconds, to bring our time in sync with universal constants (this is in relation to astronomical events). The earth is actually slowing down (very very slowly, DON'T PANIC!), plus the orbit of the earth is not circular, but is actually slightly wobbly.
The real problem, and the reason that causes all the trouble for systems designed by people that use 2 digit dates, is caused by the human ability to contract and shrink things, effectively encoding them in a method that while it appears logical to us humans, can cause all sorts of problems for computers. The human race has only itself to blame.
BTW: If you ever wondered why the calander is called the "Gregorian calander", it was named after the Pope at the time it was finally ratified (with leap years added), Pope Gregory.
I guess the real question that needs to be asked first is WHEN you intend to purchase these systems? If you are aiming at using cutting edge technology but don't intend to roll out for 6 months, these systems will be old hat by the time you get them out the door.
Things to note:
Drives If you are doing lots of data collection, make sure that you use decent spec drives and controllers, and that where you collect your data is on a totally seperate controller or channel from the main system drive(s). I'd look at a RAID controller (64 Bit PCI?) to provide a RAID striped solution to reduce disk rotational latency (not to improve data protection) and using a few smaller, faster disks. Don't use too many disks to allow for future expansion while maintaining speed. The idea is to dump the data to the drive as fast as possible. Look at the Alphas and their 64 bit PCI buses. (This is also apparently going to appear in the Athlons, so keep an eye on that). There are also Intel's that have 64 bit PCI buses, though they are no where near as common, and I have no idea how well they are supported under Linux.
CPU's Dual/Multi-CPU Athlons are round the corner. They will have much more bang for the buck than Multi-CPU Intels, especially with FPU bound applications. Also remember that while the Intel CPU's all SHARE the FSB, the Athlons each have a dedicated path from chipset to CPU, which could avoid a very problematic bottleneck if you are doing lots of data crunching. Note: I'd also wait for the Athlon's with Integrated Cache on-chip, as this will drastically improve performance with large amounts of data.
Video If you're looking at using OpenGL to render data visually (which is what I assume you've been doing on the SGI's), then I'd suggest to wait for XFree 4.0 which is also "just around the corner". The TNT2 Chip from Riva is very well supported, and is definately up there in the performance stakes. It is also not swamped with problems like the G-Force (NV10). You might also look at hardware OpenGL cards, as there are a number that are supported under Linux.
Sound If you are using sound a lot, (eg: for audio data capture) then you will want to talk to the people who wrote the drivers, or at least Alan Cox. Figure out what card provides the services you need with the least CPU cycles. Go with this, don't go with something generic simply because it's cheap. Weigh up the differences. Also beware of older SB PCI-128's, as there is a lot of stock out there that are rebadged Ensonique's (who Creative bought, and effectively designed the PCI-128) that can cause problems. I've also noticed that SB PCI-128's have a large failure rate (my work PC here has one that just makes burbling sounds instead of music).
Whatever you do, if you are aiming at cutting edge, get an idea of your time frame, and work to what will be available then. Trim the edges, but don't trim too much, particularly if you want systems that will perform exceedingly well in the future, and remain upgradable. This is the mistake I see every government department make around the world. They change something they believe isn't as important, and by changing one small part in the system, they effectively cripple the system performance.
I've actually seen it, but considering the way they have chopped and changed characters in the past, who knows what will happen!
John will probably make a good Q, but I can see other actors that would be quite good in the part, expecially those who already have scientific bent, and a possible comedy angle.
Possible scenario (whch could indeed start a whole new film) could have the science facility being destroyed by some terrorist group/whatever, and Bond goes out for revenge... "Q's Revenge".. who knows.. they've come out with some weirder stuff before! Anything is possible.
It'll be interesting how the Bond series handles this. Desmond had previously stated that he wanted to do the part until he died, and had supposedly made remarks that if he died on-stage that it was to be used as footage if possible.
So will it just be that Q retires, or that something happens to him in the next film? Only time, and his family, will tell I guess.
It is of course possible that they filmed an ending scene for him already. Then of course there is all the technical trickery that can be done with computers and existing footage (some of which would probably be from the cutting room floor).
Of course, no one will ever truely replace Q, but it will be a sought after role for many actors. So who should be the next Q? Slashdot poll anyone?
Whatever happens, I think there should be some sort of dedication to him at the start of the next film, such as In the memory of Desmond Llewelyn, may he rest in peace.
Just take this scenario, and mebbe the Olympics would be a real problem?
What if....
You plant these devices in an athlete, and use the devices to help the athlete attain supreme levels of fitness.
Then you manage to make a device that can track their movements (using sensors in newer devices) and at the point just before they reach maximum muscle compression, it gives a little 'boost' to give better, fuller, and more uniform muscle compression.
Then you put this athlete in the Olympics, and they blow the competition away. They get screened for steroids, but none are present.
So, does this mean that the screening test for the Olympics should now include an X-Ray exam as well?
There are many problems with Australia in regards to the Internet.
Telstra (formally Telecom Australia) own the largest and most complete network of copper/fibre/radio systems in Australia. Their existing infrastructure from when they were a government entity is not open to other Vendors to intergrate to. This will change, hopefully middle of next year, however until then, Telstra will try and make as much money as they can on their existing services. Admittedly it does cost them money to bring in bandwidth from the US, but no where near as much as they charge.
Optus (the main compeditor) was originally only geared up to provide Mobile Phone services. They soon moved into long distance carriers, cable (TV/Modems), and Internet Access. This puts them "behind the ball" compared to Telstra. Optus are (in conjunction with a few Australian, New Zealand and American ISP's) running in a large bandwitdth pipe for internet access. The vendors will get a guaranteed minimum bandwidth, with the potential of using more of the pipe if there is no traffic. Until this is in place however (Next year at the earliest), you either have to pay Telstra for bandwidth out of the country, pay them for access to dedicated bandwidth (eg: pay for an under-sea fibre), use satellite systems, or run your own cables under the sea (big money!)
Because there isn't that many links out of the country, it's easy to place controls on what goes in and out. Less places you actually need to choke off, as it were.
There isn't any actual declaration of "Freedom of Speech" in our constitution. It's implied and referenced to a lot, but no implicit declaration. This provides all sorts of loopholes (see censorship legislation.
You get weird governmental hangups when the floor of their the Senate or House of Representatives hang in near 50/50 proportions. Independant candidates control the votes, and to please them, some groups will go to extraodinary lengths to get their votes. eg: The Internet Censorship Bill was one such example, which was passed by the government, thereby allowing them to pass various other bills.
Things work much differently here economically. Some things here are cheaper, some things are more expensive. People have a different view on what is necessary, and what isn't. A friend of my mother who lived in Canada mentioned she had to buy a new refridgerator. They then told us it needed to be replaced because it was getting old. Turned out too old was 3 years old. We replaced ours because it stopped working (it was 15-20 years old). Same goes for cars and the like. The Australian dollar isn't doing that well either (at 63.5820 US Cents) - Remember this when you hear how much someone is being paid in Australia (or how much we are being charged) it's a lot less than you might think.
We also have a much more rugged environment. We don't get long heat and long cold. We get quick heat snaps and short cold bursts. A few (real) bridges have collapsed because of this problem (using British steel, which is not used to quick changes of temperature).
Of course the people probably most outraged over the cable modem fiasco are the ones playing network games, chewing through large amounts of bandwidth on the cable network. They didn't have to pay before, and suddenly they are paying LOTS for what they believed was a free service.
Remember one thing. We are an isolated country. Unlike the US, which has borders with Mexico and Canada, we have no such luxury. The Island nation. We also have a lot of land that has very few people spread across large areas of it. Providing services for them all (and usually at a flat rate across all areas) is a difficult task. Things you might take for granted aren't happening here. No DSL (due to Telstra not allowing Vendors access to their copper - Telstra want to run DSL services once they are ready, and not before). No multi-vendor infrastructure. I guess you can see where this is heading.
One of the things I noticed about a few of the teachers I have had over the years of my schooling was how they stood out from the rest. How their classes got higher grade averages than the rest of the country. And how they managed to keep the students captivated.
They showed us how to learn, and where to find things. They didn't expect us to just soak up everything in the class, but to use our brains. And most importantly they showed us how to apply what we were being shown in life with examples, in many cases relevant to what we were interested in, or later on, what courses we were attending.
The system itself tends to bring this about, as it doesn't allow for much in the way of corrective feedback to fix any of the problems. And the students are often left out of the loop as well, even as they approach the end of their schooling.
I don't think the answer is teaching only maths and speed reading, but mebbe teaching less of the subject and encouraging more learning in an of itself, in and out of the classroom. There are many subjects that simply must be learned at a very basic level to encourage individuality, and to encourage these people to take different careers. It might be nice for the IT industry if a whole year level was to be focused on computing, programming and system administration, but the woodworking, metalworking, textile, produce, marketing, et al, industries might get a little peeved.
I attended a public school all my life, so this isn't just the dedication of private school teachers that is rubbing off on me. In fact I tend to see the opposite here in Australia, where they teach to what is required and nothing else simply because the contracts at private schools are so long, and the pay is reasonable.
I was in the unfortunate position at school during my 8th year of education wanting to do Electronics but ending up in Accounting because there was one student under the class minimum required. My mother (thankfully) stormed up to the school, and after garnering support from other student's mothers, raised a petition to get the class running.
Something that I am also proud of is that while I attended school, I never did much in the way of homework out of school hours, preferring to do so within the school environment, and enjoying myself outside of school. In most subjects (unless they seemed utterly ludricous, or the teachers specifically did not understand what they were teaching) I did exceptionally well, because I learned the subject, and not just absorbed the information.
Those that I refused to participate in, I usually refused to do almost any work in at all. History in my 9th year of education was one such subject, where I failed deliberately. The subject matter was in fact the exact same course information that I did the year before. Only a very few parts were removed and new bits replaced. I did all the new bits, but refused to re-do all the work I did last year. Near the middle of the year I suprised the teacher when they started teaching new parts of the subject for the first time and I got 90+% for each of them. She apparently thought, even despite my complaints, that I had a learning disability. It's amazing what it takes to convince some people.
Unfortunately, one thing that some teachers are not good at is learning from their mistakes. It's a pity really, because this simple thing makes so much difference. Unfortunately because of this, the system on a whole suffers the same fate, despite the few good teachers out there.
Project Gutenberg has been around for literally years, and is a resource I always check when I can't find that elusive book.
In fact, we used to use the text from many Gutenberg documents when I was fiddling around with data compression (specifically compression methods aimed at text and english in particular).
Also, many of my relatives have asked me "Can you find out about this book on the net, and where I can find it?" and are somewhat suprised when I hand them a disk with the Gutenberg text version of it. First time I did this, they thought it was reviews of the book and details where to find it, instead of the actual text. "Remember how I said that a floppy disk holds about as much text as one small book?". *grin*
However I think they got one of the most important boosts of advertising they could ever want, an article on good ol' Slashdot. Way to go Hemos! (and CmdrTaco of course) *grin*
PS: Heya to FunkyBob, the guy who did most of the coding on that compression stuff was I mentioning earlier - and when will it ever work properly damnit! It's only been about 6 years! *grin*
A lot of SGI's products (the open source ones) are aimed as toolkits for system management, or are aimed at increasing performance and stability (XFS).
One such project is a toolkit for obtaining system performance statistics. They write the toolkit, and give it away for free, and then they write the management tool that sits on top of it, and sell that!
And how better to know just what your cluster of machines is doing, than with monitoring software? And produced by the same company that sold you the hardware? Why not?
By giving away the toolkit (and it's source), you end up with free improvements, free ports to other platforms, and toolkits that monitor stuff you may never have even thought to monitor in the first place, broadening the scope for your product.
Some types of content (static) are sometimes best not housed on-site.
I know a lot of sites that simply house their graphics and stuff on seperate machines, not within their SOI (Sphere of Influence), while keeping the important bits, like HTML and dynamic content, within house.
Static graphics are a key example. Why not move grahics and the like to key web server providers, and just reference them in the HTML instead of your own machine? You can even use multiple different servers (ie: different web hosting companies) to provide faster delivery again.
If you want to get really swish with load balancing, you can keep a list of sites where your pages are stored, and use a simple "fetch check" script to see if they're online and providing content. You can then hand out the "working" list through a round-robin-iser (that rotates the usage on the list) and have it automatically integrated into your dynamic or static pages when they are handed out.
Some people might say "what about round-robin DNS's and stuff?" Good idea, but think about one thing. What happens when 1/2 your machines go down ? You update the DNS right? How long will that take to filter out to the other DNS servers that have cached info? How long will your system be unusable from some part of the net? Having a system that polls and keeps an updated list is a very useful idea.
(Would be really nice if you could have the client figure out where to get content from based on which systems give the fastest response time, but then you get all sorts of other issues to deal with.)
Viola, you have a very fast, reliable, and effective way of providing static content from your site without using much of your bandwidth.
BTW: Ever noticed images.slashdot.org isn't the same box as slashdot.org? *grin* Offloading of key content is a great idea isn't it?
Not just congress... Go to the UN and WIPO
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This sort of thing should be brought up with WIPO (the World Intellectual Property Organization) as well. It is one of the 16 specialized agencies of the United Nations system of organizations. This is exactly what WIPO is all about, and you can read this copy of the WIPO treaty which actually resides on the US Copyright Office's website.
This will allow not only the US, but other countries to be persuaded that things need to change. It sets the benchmark to follow.
Check out the treaty itself, and then check out the agreements the US made with it, and you'll see that there is still lacking by the US in what it agrees to. Note also that the treaty was created in 1996, and that things have changed dramatically in the last few years with respect to different types of media available, which now may or may not be covered by this treaty. (I haven't had the time to scour it myself).
BTW: Yes the board on the main page is a Super Socket 7 board, but the board in the photos of the fridge looks suprisingly like a traditional 486 board (down to things like the socketed cache ram, and the like).
ERGO: They didn't have a pic of the board to put on the list, and just grabbed one that looked the right size from somewhere else.
Older CPU's are somewhat amazingly overclockable though.. I've seen 386dx40's running at 70 mhz. Of course, you're right when you say the motherboard by default would never allow that, or have such a setting, however, with a little fiddling and a clock generator.. it's possible.
Hack into the toaster, and make it play random sounds using the entertainment system. "Hi! I'm Talkie, your talking toaster." "Would anybody like some toast?" "How about a cheese and ham bramble?" "Ahh, so you're a waffle man!"
Or even put a floating disembodied head on his TV. "'ere, what's all this then?" "*Thump* *Thump* *Thump* Thats three minutes then."
Scenes from Hardware wars come to mind as well..
Oh what have we done! What have we done?
Just as long as things don't start complaining about the pain in all the diodes down their left side, I think I'll be safe.
The 802.11 standard specifies some things about encryption, but the encryption is 40 bit RC4. Fast, but very weak.
I suppose they expect to only worry about data between each hop, as then you have to guess where the new hop takes it (unless of course you KNOW where it's going by previous watching).
At 2.4 Ghz, it's interesting to note that there isn't exactly a lot of channels available up there as the bandwidths get larger. You get about 60-80 distinct channels (varies from country to country) at 1Mbit, less (not sure of the exact amount) at 2Mbit, and a grand total of 3 at 11Mbit. (This might look weird.. 80/11=7.something, and 60/11=5.something. However at higher bandwidths, you get larger amounts of edge bleeding, which is why there is only 3 channels, and in the interest of international conformance, they have reduced the channel usage to fit the wider market).
At 11Mbit, if one of these channels is occupied then you have only 2 alternatives. If they're all blocked, well, you're going to have a real problem aren't you?
It isn't hard to build devices to jam the entire bandeither. What can be more devastating however, is the power they put out, which when received by an antenna might be of enough strength to actually fry circuitry. Many microwave ovens generate frequencies around the 2.4 Ghz band, some through direct emissions at 2.4 Ghz, but most through harmonics. At between 600-700 Watts total, the ordinary microwave distrbutes a lot more power at 2.4 Ghz than the puny 500mW or 100mW that most countries allow (fortunately microwave ovens are shielded and most of this doesn't escape, especially around us humans).
Denial of service can take many forms, and current radio networks can be easily disrupted through signal damage, power drain, or signal jamming. The problem is however, getting everyone around the world to agree to a standard and spectrum that will allow large data bandwidth without country specific problems, and allowing lots of channels, with ideally a lowish frequency band to allow longer distance communications. The problem is of course, they're already taken.
I know RH, TurboLinux and Debian have gotten injections of funds from the big corporates, but what about Caldera, SuSE and the other distrbutions?
Prolly happens, just I (or the public) never hear much about it... (or people don't make as much fuss about it, which is the same thing really).
So, I suppose the question is.. who is investing in Linux Distributions, and where? Does anyone keep track of all this?
Spose this is a little off topic, but I'd like to see Caldera and SuSE get some backing like RH and the like. They all do very useful stuff for the Linux community in general, and it's nice to see them getting a helping hand occasionly. (It also tends to put off those who believe RH is taking over Linux! But that's another story.)
At SGI's Open Projects page for XFS you'll find that at LinuxWorld, SGI released documetation, data sheets and some sample parts of the XFS Journalling code (Those parts that are owned by SGI, and which there are no patent issues with).
In other words, SGI is delivering on their Open Source promise with XFS, even if in only a small way (for the moment).
Quoted from their own page... "This initial publication of excerpts of XFS Source code indicates SGI's commitment to port XFS to Linux as GPL code. This code can be freely used with Linux, without the worry of violating the GPL terms by mixing copylefted GPL and copyrighted non-GPL code in Linux. It also shows some interesting code (originally developed for IRIX) which implements the XFS journaling techniques."
Just because there will be more than one choice of file system for linux, you shouldn't go nuts about what might happen. Choice is nothing to sniff at, as we get exactly (or close to) what we want.
In fact, if they are all GPL (and I imagine they would be) then what you may see happen is a merging of technologies into a better product. Say one file system has some sort of shortcoming, but another system doesn't, then you might see a crossover that will result in better products all round.
I can't wait for XFS, or any other "proven" filesystem (which means that its been tested and works as intended) for Linux, as then I won't have to worry so much about power dropouts. Even with UPS's, sometimes even they fail (as happened to me on the weekend).
I'm in Australia, and the boss just bought one (from an Australian distributor). We wanted SCSI, but we ended up getting EIDE. (They said 2 weeks on SCSI). If we have any major drama in the next few hours, will let you know. *grin*
Slashdot Mirror
I took a good look over the Objectives By Exam and it looks rather comprehensive. I can see MANY things in there that are reasonbly difficult, diverse in their nature, not necessarily intuitive, and require some serious study.
And by giving out this list, it gives you a decent idea of what to expect. And knowing what to expect means you know what to learn if you want to succeed in getting this certification. It also gives people a set of objectives to learn even if they don't bother going through with the certification, which IMHO is a "good thing".
There are always going to be wanna-be's without motivation, frauds and people that will help them, because it is profitable to do so. It's just a matter of recognising them, and providing a detailed enough course to discourage the wanna-be's without the motivation, and the frauds from even trying. Much beyond that is futile at best, and at worst, damages the community as much, if not more, than the wanna-be's and frauds do in the first place.
As for the cost, well, if you want to succeed, you should expect to pay something, and $100 US is nothing compared to the courses I've seen on some products. Just because the software is free, doesn't mean the hard earned hours of the testers and the like should also be free.
As an aside, the only question I haven't seen yet in a Linux Certification is "When not to use Linux". Sure the list would be small, but hey, if you are true professional, you realise that no single product can be suited to everything. *grin*
This actually could be very useful for fluid dynamics tests. Use NanoFuel and NanoFlash, and when the fluid hits hard turns or corners it will glow. This can highlight areas where there is problems with the flow of water.
Could also be useful for tracing liquids that make it into the sewer systems. Use NanoLight in the chemical source, and add NanoFuel in specific areas to track and trace where the leak is.
Wonder what sort of temperature range these things can stand.... Anyone?
Unfortunately it doesn't look like any of this stuff could be used in plastics or paint in place of dangerous chemicals like phosphorus and radio-active elements....
Which is a real pity. I could use a glow-in-the-dark PC case! Anyone know of any safe chemicals or paint?
There are a few stations that already support RDS in Australia (eg: TripleJ), and systems are available here that support the RDS standard. It's been running here quite a while, it's just that not many radio stations have picked it up. I have already accidently tuned into one radio station here that was transmitting someone elses RDS signal. It didn't last long though, they vanished pretty quick.
RDS is a very old technology, and it's a real wonder this hasn't happened before. RDS is carried on a "subchannel" on the FM signal, and digital data such as the station name, time signal, etc, is transmitted. My car syncronises the inbuilt clock with that of the radio station every 2-3 minutes. (It did take TripleJ about a month to adjust to daylight savings however).
But it's not hard to fake another stations RDS signature. If a station transmits someone elses RDS signature, and your radio is set to tune to the strongest station with the same RDS sig, well.. you can guess the result I think. The original idea is to allow for movement between different locations/states that have the same station broadcasting on a different frequency, and having your car radio follow the signal automatically and seamlessly. It's just an abuse of the system that no one bothered to cater for, and even if they did, it'd be hard to implement, as the data is all one way. You could capture the data and simply re-send it, or even receive their signal and then re-transmit it. It may have even been considered, and deemed simply not worth the trouble of worrying about it.
If anything, this will lead to more publicity for pirate stations, but that also means that the people designated for tracking down pirate radio stations might hear about it a lot sooner than normal. And if they have a list of authorised frequencies that a particular RDS signal is transmitted on, then it's just a matter of singling out the ones that have a valid RDS signal but the wrong frequency. For the pirates, I'd count this as a two-edged sword.
Sheesh this has been brought up time and again.
At the time the basis of the current calander was being "thought out", there was a monk (can't remember his name) who translated the roman system into a newer system, which is the basis of the Gregorian calander in use today. One of the reasons for this, was "Why should the church use a calander based on the rule of a Roman Emperor?" They finally decided on the year of christ's birth as the founding date. But they didn't use the current numbering system, they used roman numerals. How do you express 0 in roman numerals?
The romans had no concept of how to represent "nothing" so they took christ's birth as the year 1 AD. If you want to get really deep into this, you will also find that the date of christ's birth, the date of his death, and the actual number of years that had passed since his death to the time of the creation of the AD system was inaccurately calculated, due to misunderstandings of how lunar time, and siderial time interrelated, as well as simple "miscalculations".
However, even then, the calander was not 100% correct. Leap years were added, (to account for the drift caused by the fact that the rotation of the earth on it's axis, and the rotation of the earth around the sun do not mesh terribly well, there being approximately a 0.25 day difference) and then they were further resolved. The final rule (which is very accurate over large numbers of years) states that a leap year occurs..
On top of this, you have leap seconds, to bring our time in sync with universal constants (this is in relation to astronomical events). The earth is actually slowing down (very very slowly, DON'T PANIC!), plus the orbit of the earth is not circular, but is actually slightly wobbly.
The real problem, and the reason that causes all the trouble for systems designed by people that use 2 digit dates, is caused by the human ability to contract and shrink things, effectively encoding them in a method that while it appears logical to us humans, can cause all sorts of problems for computers. The human race has only itself to blame.
BTW: If you ever wondered why the calander is called the "Gregorian calander", it was named after the Pope at the time it was finally ratified (with leap years added), Pope Gregory.
I guess the real question that needs to be asked first is WHEN you intend to purchase these systems? If you are aiming at using cutting edge technology but don't intend to roll out for 6 months, these systems will be old hat by the time you get them out the door.
Things to note:
If you are doing lots of data collection, make sure that you use decent spec drives and controllers, and that where you collect your data is on a totally seperate controller or channel from the main system drive(s). I'd look at a RAID controller (64 Bit PCI?) to provide a RAID striped solution to reduce disk rotational latency (not to improve data protection) and using a few smaller, faster disks. Don't use too many disks to allow for future expansion while maintaining speed. The idea is to dump the data to the drive as fast as possible. Look at the Alphas and their 64 bit PCI buses. (This is also apparently going to appear in the Athlons, so keep an eye on that). There are also Intel's that have 64 bit PCI buses, though they are no where near as common, and I have no idea how well they are supported under Linux.
Dual/Multi-CPU Athlons are round the corner. They will have much more bang for the buck than Multi-CPU Intels, especially with FPU bound applications. Also remember that while the Intel CPU's all SHARE the FSB, the Athlons each have a dedicated path from chipset to CPU, which could avoid a very problematic bottleneck if you are doing lots of data crunching. Note: I'd also wait for the Athlon's with Integrated Cache on-chip, as this will drastically improve performance with large amounts of data.
If you're looking at using OpenGL to render data visually (which is what I assume you've been doing on the SGI's), then I'd suggest to wait for XFree 4.0 which is also "just around the corner". The TNT2 Chip from Riva is very well supported, and is definately up there in the performance stakes. It is also not swamped with problems like the G-Force (NV10). You might also look at hardware OpenGL cards, as there are a number that are supported under Linux.
If you are using sound a lot, (eg: for audio data capture) then you will want to talk to the people who wrote the drivers, or at least Alan Cox. Figure out what card provides the services you need with the least CPU cycles. Go with this, don't go with something generic simply because it's cheap. Weigh up the differences. Also beware of older SB PCI-128's, as there is a lot of stock out there that are rebadged Ensonique's (who Creative bought, and effectively designed the PCI-128) that can cause problems. I've also noticed that SB PCI-128's have a large failure rate (my work PC here has one that just makes burbling sounds instead of music).
Whatever you do, if you are aiming at cutting edge, get an idea of your time frame, and work to what will be available then. Trim the edges, but don't trim too much, particularly if you want systems that will perform exceedingly well in the future, and remain upgradable. This is the mistake I see every government department make around the world. They change something they believe isn't as important, and by changing one small part in the system, they effectively cripple the system performance.
Either way, good luck!
I've actually seen it, but considering the way they have chopped and changed characters in the past, who knows what will happen!
John will probably make a good Q, but I can see other actors that would be quite good in the part, expecially those who already have scientific bent, and a possible comedy angle.
Possible scenario (whch could indeed start a whole new film) could have the science facility being destroyed by some terrorist group/whatever, and Bond goes out for revenge... "Q's Revenge".. who knows.. they've come out with some weirder stuff before! Anything is possible.
It'll be interesting how the Bond series handles this. Desmond had previously stated that he wanted to do the part until he died, and had supposedly made remarks that if he died on-stage that it was to be used as footage if possible.
So will it just be that Q retires, or that something happens to him in the next film? Only time, and his family, will tell I guess.
It is of course possible that they filmed an ending scene for him already. Then of course there is all the technical trickery that can be done with computers and existing footage (some of which would probably be from the cutting room floor).
Of course, no one will ever truely replace Q, but it will be a sought after role for many actors. So who should be the next Q? Slashdot poll anyone?
Whatever happens, I think there should be some sort of dedication to him at the start of the next film, such as In the memory of Desmond Llewelyn, may he rest in peace.
Just take this scenario, and mebbe the Olympics would be a real problem?
What if....
You plant these devices in an athlete, and use the devices to help the athlete attain supreme levels of fitness.
Then you manage to make a device that can track their movements (using sensors in newer devices) and at the point just before they reach maximum muscle compression, it gives a little 'boost' to give better, fuller, and more uniform muscle compression.
Then you put this athlete in the Olympics, and they blow the competition away. They get screened for steroids, but none are present.
So, does this mean that the screening test for the Olympics should now include an X-Ray exam as well?
There are many problems with Australia in regards to the Internet.
Of course the people probably most outraged over the cable modem fiasco are the ones playing network games, chewing through large amounts of bandwidth on the cable network. They didn't have to pay before, and suddenly they are paying LOTS for what they believed was a free service.
Remember one thing. We are an isolated country. Unlike the US, which has borders with Mexico and Canada, we have no such luxury. The Island nation. We also have a lot of land that has very few people spread across large areas of it. Providing services for them all (and usually at a flat rate across all areas) is a difficult task. Things you might take for granted aren't happening here. No DSL (due to Telstra not allowing Vendors access to their copper - Telstra want to run DSL services once they are ready, and not before). No multi-vendor infrastructure. I guess you can see where this is heading.
One of the things I noticed about a few of the teachers I have had over the years of my schooling was how they stood out from the rest. How their classes got higher grade averages than the rest of the country. And how they managed to keep the students captivated.
They showed us how to learn, and where to find things. They didn't expect us to just soak up everything in the class, but to use our brains. And most importantly they showed us how to apply what we were being shown in life with examples, in many cases relevant to what we were interested in, or later on, what courses we were attending.
The system itself tends to bring this about, as it doesn't allow for much in the way of corrective feedback to fix any of the problems. And the students are often left out of the loop as well, even as they approach the end of their schooling.
I don't think the answer is teaching only maths and speed reading, but mebbe teaching less of the subject and encouraging more learning in an of itself, in and out of the classroom. There are many subjects that simply must be learned at a very basic level to encourage individuality, and to encourage these people to take different careers. It might be nice for the IT industry if a whole year level was to be focused on computing, programming and system administration, but the woodworking, metalworking, textile, produce, marketing, et al, industries might get a little peeved.
I attended a public school all my life, so this isn't just the dedication of private school teachers that is rubbing off on me. In fact I tend to see the opposite here in Australia, where they teach to what is required and nothing else simply because the contracts at private schools are so long, and the pay is reasonable.
I was in the unfortunate position at school during my 8th year of education wanting to do Electronics but ending up in Accounting because there was one student under the class minimum required. My mother (thankfully) stormed up to the school, and after garnering support from other student's mothers, raised a petition to get the class running.
Something that I am also proud of is that while I attended school, I never did much in the way of homework out of school hours, preferring to do so within the school environment, and enjoying myself outside of school. In most subjects (unless they seemed utterly ludricous, or the teachers specifically did not understand what they were teaching) I did exceptionally well, because I learned the subject, and not just absorbed the information.
Those that I refused to participate in, I usually refused to do almost any work in at all. History in my 9th year of education was one such subject, where I failed deliberately. The subject matter was in fact the exact same course information that I did the year before. Only a very few parts were removed and new bits replaced. I did all the new bits, but refused to re-do all the work I did last year. Near the middle of the year I suprised the teacher when they started teaching new parts of the subject for the first time and I got 90+% for each of them. She apparently thought, even despite my complaints, that I had a learning disability. It's amazing what it takes to convince some people.
Unfortunately, one thing that some teachers are not good at is learning from their mistakes. It's a pity really, because this simple thing makes so much difference. Unfortunately because of this, the system on a whole suffers the same fate, despite the few good teachers out there.
How about giving Project Gutenberg a free banner ad here on Slashdot? Now that'd generate a lot of traffic and put them right out in the public view!
Whaddya say guys?
Project Gutenberg has been around for literally years, and is a resource I always check when I can't find that elusive book.
In fact, we used to use the text from many Gutenberg documents when I was fiddling around with data compression (specifically compression methods aimed at text and english in particular).
Also, many of my relatives have asked me "Can you find out about this book on the net, and where I can find it?" and are somewhat suprised when I hand them a disk with the Gutenberg text version of it. First time I did this, they thought it was reviews of the book and details where to find it, instead of the actual text. "Remember how I said that a floppy disk holds about as much text as one small book?". *grin*
However I think they got one of the most important boosts of advertising they could ever want, an article on good ol' Slashdot. Way to go Hemos! (and CmdrTaco of course) *grin*
PS: Heya to FunkyBob, the guy who did most of the coding on that compression stuff was I mentioning earlier - and when will it ever work properly damnit! It's only been about 6 years! *grin*
A lot of SGI's products (the open source ones) are aimed as toolkits for system management, or are aimed at increasing performance and stability (XFS).
One such project is a toolkit for obtaining system performance statistics. They write the toolkit, and give it away for free, and then they write the management tool that sits on top of it, and sell that!
And how better to know just what your cluster of machines is doing, than with monitoring software? And produced by the same company that sold you the hardware? Why not?
By giving away the toolkit (and it's source), you end up with free improvements, free ports to other platforms, and toolkits that monitor stuff you may never have even thought to monitor in the first place, broadening the scope for your product.
Whatever you do... sue Microsoft over that damn paper clip!!! Argghhhhh!!!!!!!!!
Some types of content (static) are sometimes best not housed on-site.
I know a lot of sites that simply house their graphics and stuff on seperate machines, not within their SOI (Sphere of Influence), while keeping the important bits, like HTML and dynamic content, within house.Static graphics are a key example. Why not move grahics and the like to key web server providers, and just reference them in the HTML instead of your own machine? You can even use multiple different servers (ie: different web hosting companies) to provide faster delivery again.
If you want to get really swish with load balancing, you can keep a list of sites where your pages are stored, and use a simple "fetch check" script to see if they're online and providing content. You can then hand out the "working" list through a round-robin-iser (that rotates the usage on the list) and have it automatically integrated into your dynamic or static pages when they are handed out.Some people might say "what about round-robin DNS's and stuff?" Good idea, but think about one thing. What happens when 1/2 your machines go down ? You update the DNS right? How long will that take to filter out to the other DNS servers that have cached info? How long will your system be unusable from some part of the net? Having a system that polls and keeps an updated list is a very useful idea.
(Would be really nice if you could have the client figure out where to get content from based on which systems give the fastest response time, but then you get all sorts of other issues to deal with.)Viola, you have a very fast, reliable, and effective way of providing static content from your site without using much of your bandwidth.
BTW: Ever noticed images.slashdot.org isn't the same box as slashdot.org? *grin* Offloading of key content is a great idea isn't it?
This sort of thing should be brought up with WIPO (the World Intellectual Property Organization) as well. It is one of the 16 specialized agencies of the United Nations system of organizations. This is exactly what WIPO is all about, and you can read this copy of the WIPO treaty which actually resides on the US Copyright Office's website.
This will allow not only the US, but other countries to be persuaded that things need to change. It sets the benchmark to follow.
Check out the treaty itself, and then check out the agreements the US made with it, and you'll see that there is still lacking by the US in what it agrees to. Note also that the treaty was created in 1996, and that things have changed dramatically in the last few years with respect to different types of media available, which now may or may not be covered by this treaty. (I haven't had the time to scour it myself).
Might be a joke, but it's funny none the less..
BTW: Yes the board on the main page is a Super Socket 7 board, but the board in the photos of the fridge looks suprisingly like a traditional 486 board (down to things like the socketed cache ram, and the like).
ERGO: They didn't have a pic of the board to put on the list, and just grabbed one that looked the right size from somewhere else.
Older CPU's are somewhat amazingly overclockable though.. I've seen 386dx40's running at 70 mhz. Of course, you're right when you say the motherboard by default would never allow that, or have such a setting, however, with a little fiddling and a clock generator.. it's possible.
Still a hoax, but a classic none the less.
Better yet...
Hack into the toaster, and make it play random sounds using the entertainment system. "Hi! I'm Talkie, your talking toaster." "Would anybody like some toast?" "How about a cheese and ham bramble?" "Ahh, so you're a waffle man!"
Or even put a floating disembodied head on his TV. "'ere, what's all this then?" "*Thump* *Thump* *Thump* Thats three minutes then."
Scenes from Hardware wars come to mind as well..
Oh what have we done! What have we done?
Just as long as things don't start complaining about the pain in all the diodes down their left side, I think I'll be safe.
The 802.11 standard specifies some things about encryption, but the encryption is 40 bit RC4. Fast, but very weak.
I suppose they expect to only worry about data between each hop, as then you have to guess where the new hop takes it (unless of course you KNOW where it's going by previous watching).
At 2.4 Ghz, it's interesting to note that there isn't exactly a lot of channels available up there as the bandwidths get larger. You get about 60-80 distinct channels (varies from country to country) at 1Mbit, less (not sure of the exact amount) at 2Mbit, and a grand total of 3 at 11Mbit. (This might look weird.. 80/11=7.something, and 60/11=5.something. However at higher bandwidths, you get larger amounts of edge bleeding, which is why there is only 3 channels, and in the interest of international conformance, they have reduced the channel usage to fit the wider market).
At 11Mbit, if one of these channels is occupied then you have only 2 alternatives. If they're all blocked, well, you're going to have a real problem aren't you?
It isn't hard to build devices to jam the entire bandeither. What can be more devastating however, is the power they put out, which when received by an antenna might be of enough strength to actually fry circuitry. Many microwave ovens generate frequencies around the 2.4 Ghz band, some through direct emissions at 2.4 Ghz, but most through harmonics. At between 600-700 Watts total, the ordinary microwave distrbutes a lot more power at 2.4 Ghz than the puny 500mW or 100mW that most countries allow (fortunately microwave ovens are shielded and most of this doesn't escape, especially around us humans).
Denial of service can take many forms, and current radio networks can be easily disrupted through signal damage, power drain, or signal jamming. The problem is however, getting everyone around the world to agree to a standard and spectrum that will allow large data bandwidth without country specific problems, and allowing lots of channels, with ideally a lowish frequency band to allow longer distance communications. The problem is of course, they're already taken.
I know RH, TurboLinux and Debian have gotten injections of funds from the big corporates, but what about Caldera, SuSE and the other distrbutions?
Prolly happens, just I (or the public) never hear much about it... (or people don't make as much fuss about it, which is the same thing really).
So, I suppose the question is.. who is investing in Linux Distributions, and where? Does anyone keep track of all this?
Spose this is a little off topic, but I'd like to see Caldera and SuSE get some backing like RH and the like. They all do very useful stuff for the Linux community in general, and it's nice to see them getting a helping hand occasionly. (It also tends to put off those who believe RH is taking over Linux! But that's another story.)
At SGI's Open Projects page for XFS you'll find that at LinuxWorld, SGI released documetation, data sheets and some sample parts of the XFS Journalling code (Those parts that are owned by SGI, and which there are no patent issues with).
In other words, SGI is delivering on their Open Source promise with XFS, even if in only a small way (for the moment).
Quoted from their own page... "This initial publication of excerpts of XFS Source code indicates SGI's commitment to port XFS to Linux as GPL code. This code can be freely used with Linux, without the worry of violating the GPL terms by mixing copylefted GPL and copyrighted non-GPL code in Linux. It also shows some interesting code (originally developed for IRIX) which implements the XFS journaling techniques."
Just because there will be more than one choice of file system for linux, you shouldn't go nuts about what might happen. Choice is nothing to sniff at, as we get exactly (or close to) what we want.
In fact, if they are all GPL (and I imagine they would be) then what you may see happen is a merging of technologies into a better product. Say one file system has some sort of shortcoming, but another system doesn't, then you might see a crossover that will result in better products all round.
I can't wait for XFS, or any other "proven" filesystem (which means that its been tested and works as intended) for Linux, as then I won't have to worry so much about power dropouts. Even with UPS's, sometimes even they fail (as happened to me on the weekend).
Mainly cos he keeps forgetting that he's run these stories!
Sheesh Rob,.. get out the memory enhancing drugs will ya?
Must be all the Jolt....
I'm in Australia, and the boss just bought one (from an Australian distributor). We wanted SCSI, but we ended up getting EIDE. (They said 2 weeks on SCSI). If we have any major drama in the next few hours, will let you know. *grin*