Sametime services from Lotus. Real-time chat, with a real-time translation engine. English, French, Spanish, German, and I think Portugese are among the languages covered.
http://www.lotus.com/sametime
It uses one of IBM's better/best translation engines.
First, allow the programmers to create a prototype. Give them a specified time period (a week or two) to come up with a concept proof for what you're after. This is the first R&D phase.
Second, go through the prototype, and repeat step one and two until you get a prototype that you like (see the end of this for clarification). This determines if the project is worth pursuing. There's three estimates you need here. The first is the estimate of how long it'll take to complete WITHOUT ANYTHING NEW the prototype. More simply, if you were to move the prototype to production, what would it take?
Third, there is the estimate for the additional features not included in the prototype, but that were included in the original design request.
Fourth, is the scope creep stage. This is where you throw in the new features you want, or where you refine previous ideas. Most items in this list are probably best left for future projects, or should be smaller projects in and of themselves.
This is exactly the method the auto industry uses. The managers say they want a car that looks like or does X. The designers go draw up a few things, and take it back to the bosses, and incorporate feedback. This all continues until the bosses see something they like.
At this point, you're up to step three, which is what would it take to bring what's been drawn to the market. Extras, options, available colors, interior materials, performance packages, and all that are not part of this project. They are extras. They are side-pieces that integrate into the final product, but are not necessary. You can build a sell a car that lacks air conditioning and a radio.
After this comes step four, which is the iterative/derivative models. Volkswagen is just bringing their step four products, the new turbonium, and the new four-wheel drive Beetle, to market. Neither of these was in the original design specification, but they are both offspring of the Beetle.
Lastly, understand that programming and farming are similar endeavours. Some years you make money, and have a bountiful harvest. Other years, nothing goes right. You can force extra food out of the ground, but it takes significantly more inputs, and even then you may not get all you wanted.
A search engine that searches your site, and actually works. Place a link to it at the top of _every_ page, and again at the bottom.
Why? Because it allows them to bypass navigation. They also may not know what the heck it's called, or when it was, or all of your content may not be reachable by navigation. (As in, broken links.)
Minimize graphics, propoganda, self-congratulatory nonsense, and non-content. You're government, not a business. Follow the metaphor of online newspapers where there is minimal glitz, and copious content.
Skip flashy, flashing, animated anything. No graphics as text. No sound files. No streaming anything (unless it's content, and not some speech by a politician about how he's improving lives). Make URL's memorable like my.gov/taxes or my.gov/forms. People can remember URLs the same way they can rememember 10-digit phone numbers. Use directories with default documents rather than obtusely named documents. compare my.gov/taxes/2000 vs. my.gov/taxes/2000-forms-list.cfm. Which can you remember?
If you want to hire someone for help, hire someone who's specialty is useability, and not web design (they tend to be mutually exclusive groups). That'll make it available to the handicapped (federal mandate on that, you know, but rarely enforced), consume less bandwidth, and the average employee can create a web page from a template. Discourage forms/files in.doc format, as that makes it easy to embarass yourself with a Word virus. PDF or plain HTML (which you can save all Word documents as) suffices.
Most of all, list EVERYONE's email addresses. The big boss types may not like having their email addresses listed, but heck, the Prez and Vice-Prez have theirs listed, as does every member of congress. Also, have a generic email address as a catch-all for those who don't know who to contact. Make that account auto-reply immediately (so they know you got it), then have someone who's job it is to either reply or forward, those emails, within one day of receipt.
I'm serious, and no, this isn't some X-files nonsense. The correct term is "Reservoir-Induced
Seismicity". A URL to get folks started:
http://www.google.com/search?q=dams+cause+earthq ua kes&hl=en&lr=&safe=off
Think of it this way. When you build a house, it settles. When you introduce a lot of weight anywhere onto the earth's surface, something has to deflect. In the case of softer ground, it settles, whilst bedrock deflects less, often imperceptably.
The introduction of thousands of tons of weight into an area does cause problems. Everyone who's taken a geology class has heard how land uplifts after glaciers recede (weight removal), so why wouldn't land sink if weight is introduced?
Two more examples. Quake Lake west of Yellowstone National Park. A large earthquake caused a mountain to fall, only a couple of years after a dam was built upstream. Hungry Horse Dam near Glacier National Park. Almost no siesmic activity, then a nice 7+ Richter quake only a couple of years after it filled.
I know it sounds hokey, but honest folks. T'aint snake oil I'm selling here....
What ICANN failes to realize...
on
More on ICANN
·
· Score: 2
...is that by failing to act honorably, they are pissing the rest of us off. Once enough large corporations and entities get furious, ICANN will be replaced.
I think ICANN is doing it's best to make itself obsolete.
...since people ultimately are free to move and live where they want...
Written like a man who's out of touch, always had money, and always had options.
As an ex-poor person, I can say that poor people have damned few options. When you barely have sufficient funds to clothe and feed yourself, then migration is out of the question. The point of The Grapes of Wrath was that settling down somewhere took more money than moving about. With the new digital economy (whatever that is), the hand-skills of craftsmen of old are being replaced by the mind-skills of the new craftsmen.
With this realization that you seek not just warm bodies as laborers, but active minds; not spots for warehousing product, but areas to farm talent, the paradigm for what constitutes value, labor, and saleable product changes.
Somehow, I feel you read little past the dust jacket and foreword of the book you reviewed.
The single file vs. multiple file thing kinda breaks down at large levels. There's some threshold you hit, but I'm not sure what/where it is. All I know is, where I'm consulting now, they're definitely over the line.
The typical mail server (where I'm at now) is a Quad Xeon, 4G RAM, 100G RAID, running Lotus Notes, and supporting up to 3,000 people (per server), with 50,000 people worldwide using email (and calendaring). At this level of use, we do have to have multiple servers, but we're trying to keep all metrics below 50% use (esp CPU and I/O). We could buy one herking big box, but bandwidth to overseas is expensive and unreliable, so we've got positioned, local mail servers. I should point out that all email going in and out, and that the mail gateways, are all running Linux on Penguin boxes.:-) The mail servers are all being clustered as I write this, so half of them are clustered (with full failover) as I write this.
I guess there could be a speed differene in the I/O channel when writing to a single file (SQL server style) versus writing to seperate files (spooled mail style, and also what Notes does), but I can't imagine it'd be more than a couple of percentage points, and largely negligible. You either have to write the information to a big file with some sort of To: information attached, or you have to look up some file path information, then write to a specific file. Is it faster to write it to a particular spot in a file, or to a particular spot in a particular file? I'll leave that argument for the folks who know, invent, and engineer hardware.
I'll concede that backups is a moot argument, since there are so many products that are able to back up a file even if a process has it locked.
With multiple files, you could span not only disks (at the low end), but RAID systems. Maybe do something clever like putting your email freaks on an expensive high-performance RAID, and everyone else on a slower RAID. (Users here do mail 20-80MB file attachments around quite often.) But that's getting at the extreme end. More likely, if you can use different directory paths, you can add disk space as needed, and quickly, without having to grow files, or file systems.
Oh, and before someone takes the obligatory dig at Lotus Notes, say what you want. It's the only system I've seen that can encrypt email so that the user can read it, but not the mail admin. Incredibly secure.
...who thinks that the latest ICANN decisions seemed designed to milk money out of those who can most afford to pay? Businesses, doctors, lawyers, hospitals....
Sendmail, and most other *nix mail systems, use a seperate mail file per person. Ditto for OpenMail and Lotus Notes. Exchange (when I was adminning it) ran as a single large database. It was basically an SQL-style server, with all the messages and information stored in tuples in the one big file. Subject was one field, To: another, etc. etc.
The one file is also one of Windows' weaknesses in the area of the Registry. When the registry (a database) goes whacko, you sometimes have to resort to deleting it, and doing a fresh install. Sure, it's fast, but it's prone to failure. Machines are getting fast enough that we should start burning some of the CPU bandwidth on redunancy inside file formats, checksumming....
Calendaring.
Lowered training costs.
Lowered support costs.
Ability to add on required widgets.
That required widget where I work is document retention. Owing to a legal battle a few years ago where someone found a steaming email that tipped the case, Legal decided that all email shalt live for 30 days and none more (with a few exceptions). We had to come up with a way of doing that, and a way of preventing email from being downloaded to the client. Needless to say, we didn't settle on Exchange (and I've admin'd on qmail, sendmail, Exchange, Lotus Notes, GroupWise, TAO, OpenMail....)
In a tech-saavy company, with tech-saavy people, the email system doesn't matter. Out here in the real world, where folks can't and don't install their own anything, and you have to send them to class, you do have to homogenize to save money.
Do steer clear of Exchange. Storing all the messages in one big database is asking for trouble. And it is trouble when the message store gets corrupted.
Fiber to every floor. (to a distribution center)
Redundant fiber between buildings.
Conduit everywhere, and leave pull strings inside. (go slightly bigger conduit than they recommend)
CAT 5e or 6 from distribution center (on floor) to outlets.
If you want wireless, do it per big room. Share wireless is sloooow, but very handy. If the room supports theater-style seating, or fixed desks, build RJ-45 jacks and power outlets into at least every other desk.
Some people want to drive it, and some want to work on it. Mechanics may not be great drivers, and great drivers may not be able to change their own oil.
Being involved in one doesn't mean being involved in everything.
Palm Pilot + GPS = most of what you want. Get a waterproofing kit for your Palm at http://www.aquapac.net/homeframe.html. You can buy AAA size batteries anywhere in the world, or even recharge them quickly off of a solar cell charger.
Write a hack that keeps your Palm on all the time, and instead draw power directly from something other than AAA's, like one of those rugged marine-duty batteries.
For sailing you need, what, speed and heading? GPS gives both. Or buy a magnetic compass (http://www.precisionnavigation.com/palmnavigator3 rd.html) for your Palm as well. Bet you could write an interface to your depth gauge via the serial input.
Seriously. Server runs on Linux, Sparc, AIX, AS/400, HPUX, and probably a few others I know. Scaleable, redundant, and even does some strange-o stuff called Off Line services, where you can cache a web page locally, then work with the application while not online. Also plugs into Db2, SAP, Oracle, MS SQL, and allows you to run IIS as your web server if you so desire.
The whole Lotus.com site, and some of ibm.com is run off of Notes servers.
"Warren who? No, I'm sorry, I don't know, nor have I ever known anyone named Warren who sold me drugs. I mean, Warren didn't sell me drugs. I mean, if I ever bought drugs, it would have been a youthfull indescription. But that's not saying I did anything 25 years ago, because I'm not sure what I took, I mean did back then."
"The Machine that Changed the World" by James Womack, Daniel Jones, and Daniel Roos. Published by Simon & Schuster. No ISBN number, so you'll have to hunt for it. Nice little book out of MIT, about 10 years old, that studies the automobile and it's future. Nice starting point if you want to have an informed opinion. (flame mode off) After that, do a bit of reading on The Toyota Method (aka Just In Time Delivery), which has Darwin'd into the bastardized Six Sigma (whose champions seem to focus on statistical manipulation as holy grail, rather than processes). For those who don't want to read, I'll summarize the Toyota Method. Order in bulk, but take delivery in small bites. When problems arise, you've got less faulty product, the person who delivered it to you has less to recall, and there's less money tied up in parts/pieces that are sitting around in warehouses. (That's just part of the whole Toyota method.)
Anyway, the Koreans (KIA = Killed In Automobile) and the second-tier are aiming at a market, which is out crapping the crap end of the car market. Resale value is not a measure of engineering quality, or assembly quality. Ford had good quality, but they're managing themselves out of the market, and have frankly lost the hungry edge to do better. Chrysler still suffers from the Iococa legacy. (Remember, Lee Iococa went to President Nixon and said airbags will kill more people than they save, and we'll go bankrupt from the extra expense.) Oldsmobile was good a few decades ago, but haven't pulled any neat technology tricks since their Quad engine was created. Dodge makes nice trucks, but flimsy cars.
For the real skinny on engineering quality plus assembly fit&finish, take a look at the repair histories. http://www.consumerreports.org for example. True, the U.S. companies are improving (save Saturn, which can't decide whether to improve, or fold), but the improvements have been in the past 4-5 years. Which means I'm guilty of 90's thinking at the least.
Remember, a poor quality product is most often a deliberate management decision, not a failing of the engineers, or of the assemblers. American auto manufacturers are plagued by older management, who are outdated, undereducated, and curiously proud of it. Of course, they'll word it, "That's the way we've always done it." Display some adaptability, folks.
I'm a consultant out in industry, and I'm amazed at the amount of money that gets squandered. A company with an average market share, and an average product, can make money easily. They have chosen not to by choosing inept internal management, who make inept decisions, which cost money. Sure, it's only a few tens of thousands here and there, but it all adds up.
The space shuttle was conceived in the early 1970's. It's old technology, and old-style thinking in the same ways that most U.S. auto manufacturers continue to churn out low-quality, high-defect, technologically immature products.
The original space shuttle was a space-faring jet with air-breathing engines. The ideas were ahead of the technology, and they finally went to straight rocket power. The latest incarnation of the old idea, the Space Plane, is what the shuttle will be. NASA should really do the efficient heavy-lifting rockets to toss loads skyward, then send the technicians along in a much smaller shuttle to deal with things. The Russians perfected that technique.
The newer shuttles have been improved over the years, and I believe the newest ones are actually smaller than the original Enterprise, and make better use of the internal space (thus providing more useable space). The engines have improved, as has the entire rest of the vehicle. You never hear about tiles vibrating loose anymore.
The real problem here is that the U.S. Public demands 100% safety and success in all things spacegoing. Blowing a school teacher apart, and losing a few Mars probes hasn't helped their cause. But let's remember NASA has to deal with the low-bidder curse that plagues the U.S. Military. Lowest bidder = highest problems = highest number of fixes = highest long run cost = nice method for getting rich while being the "lowest" bidder. I think it was Kodak who offered two mirrors (tested) for the price of the one untested, imperfect mirror that made it into the Hubble. I can't remember which Congressman introduced the bill requiring one of his home-state companies do the mirror.....
In 1984 it was low, in 1996 it was low. It's low every time a sitting President runs for a second term. It also tends to be lower for the regional races when the governor or congressperson is running for a second term.
Telefeedback, force feedback, and a few other buzznames for the same thing. It's just like power steering. You move something a little bit in one way, and some simple hydraulic valvery assists greatly. Throw in some pressure sensors in the sphere, and it can tell if you're starting to change direction. Some low-speed computer can keep up with this information. No more complex than a large Caterpillar-style tractor.
But on the other hand, let's not fixate on inertia. I bet your system adapts to it really quickly. Riding a unicycle is non instantaneous in changing directions. You have to kind of work at it. Not a major effort, but it does take/thought/.
I meant the expansion or replacement of the Panama Canal. Either Popular Science or Popular Mechanics is where I first saw it as a kid, and I've seen other variations of it since. 1960's or later, but not later than the end of Reagan (and the death of the "Nukes are Safe" era).
Other posters here have corrected me. The newer route was going through some other area between North and South America. The idea was to bury nukes, then use them to push huge volumes of earth up and out of the way.
Slashdot Mirror
Sametime services from Lotus. Real-time chat, with a real-time translation engine. English, French, Spanish, German, and I think Portugese are among the languages covered.
http://www.lotus.com/sametime
It uses one of IBM's better/best translation engines.
First, allow the programmers to create a prototype. Give them a specified time period (a week or two) to come up with a concept proof for what you're after. This is the first R&D phase.
Second, go through the prototype, and repeat step one and two until you get a prototype that you like (see the end of this for clarification). This determines if the project is worth pursuing. There's three estimates you need here. The first is the estimate of how long it'll take to complete WITHOUT ANYTHING NEW the prototype. More simply, if you were to move the prototype to production, what would it take?
Third, there is the estimate for the additional features not included in the prototype, but that were included in the original design request.
Fourth, is the scope creep stage. This is where you throw in the new features you want, or where you refine previous ideas. Most items in this list are probably best left for future projects, or should be smaller projects in and of themselves.
This is exactly the method the auto industry uses. The managers say they want a car that looks like or does X. The designers go draw up a few things, and take it back to the bosses, and incorporate feedback. This all continues until the bosses see something they like.
At this point, you're up to step three, which is what would it take to bring what's been drawn to the market. Extras, options, available colors, interior materials, performance packages, and all that are not part of this project. They are extras. They are side-pieces that integrate into the final product, but are not necessary. You can build a sell a car that lacks air conditioning and a radio.
After this comes step four, which is the iterative/derivative models. Volkswagen is just bringing their step four products, the new turbonium, and the new four-wheel drive Beetle, to market. Neither of these was in the original design specification, but they are both offspring of the Beetle.
Lastly, understand that programming and farming are similar endeavours. Some years you make money, and have a bountiful harvest. Other years, nothing goes right. You can force extra food out of the ground, but it takes significantly more inputs, and even then you may not get all you wanted.
A search engine that searches your site, and actually works. Place a link to it at the top of _every_ page, and again at the bottom.
Why? Because it allows them to bypass navigation. They also may not know what the heck it's called, or when it was, or all of your content may not be reachable by navigation. (As in, broken links.)
Minimize graphics, propoganda, self-congratulatory nonsense, and non-content. You're government, not a business. Follow the metaphor of online newspapers where there is minimal glitz, and copious content.
.doc format, as that makes it easy to embarass yourself with a Word virus. PDF or plain HTML (which you can save all Word documents as) suffices.
Skip flashy, flashing, animated anything. No graphics as text. No sound files. No streaming anything (unless it's content, and not some speech by a politician about how he's improving lives). Make URL's memorable like my.gov/taxes or my.gov/forms. People can remember URLs the same way they can rememember 10-digit phone numbers. Use directories with default documents rather than obtusely named documents. compare my.gov/taxes/2000 vs. my.gov/taxes/2000-forms-list.cfm. Which can you remember?
If you want to hire someone for help, hire someone who's specialty is useability, and not web design (they tend to be mutually exclusive groups). That'll make it available to the handicapped (federal mandate on that, you know, but rarely enforced), consume less bandwidth, and the average employee can create a web page from a template. Discourage forms/files in
Most of all, list EVERYONE's email addresses. The big boss types may not like having their email addresses listed, but heck, the Prez and Vice-Prez have theirs listed, as does every member of congress. Also, have a generic email address as a catch-all for those who don't know who to contact. Make that account auto-reply immediately (so they know you got it), then have someone who's job it is to either reply or forward, those emails, within one day of receipt.
I'm serious, and no, this isn't some X-files nonsense. The correct term is "Reservoir-Induced
q ua kes&hl=en&lr=&safe=off
Seismicity". A URL to get folks started:
http://www.google.com/search?q=dams+cause+earth
Think of it this way. When you build a house, it settles. When you introduce a lot of weight anywhere onto the earth's surface, something has to deflect. In the case of softer ground, it settles, whilst bedrock deflects less, often imperceptably.
The introduction of thousands of tons of weight into an area does cause problems. Everyone who's taken a geology class has heard how land uplifts after glaciers recede (weight removal), so why wouldn't land sink if weight is introduced?
Two more examples. Quake Lake west of Yellowstone National Park. A large earthquake caused a mountain to fall, only a couple of years after a dam was built upstream. Hungry Horse Dam near Glacier National Park. Almost no siesmic activity, then a nice 7+ Richter quake only a couple of years after it filled.
I know it sounds hokey, but honest folks. T'aint snake oil I'm selling here....
...is that by failing to act honorably, they are pissing the rest of us off. Once enough large corporations and entities get furious, ICANN will be replaced.
I think ICANN is doing it's best to make itself obsolete.
It's all more imaginary than any of Clarke's fiction.
But, since the guy owes over a million pounds (about $1.5 U.S.), then the guy's got a lot to deal with first. Harassment from MI5 and such, nonsense.
...the phone company putting a payphone in your house. You can make all the outgoing calls you want, but you can't receive calls.
...since people ultimately are free to move and live where they want...
Written like a man who's out of touch, always had money, and always had options.
As an ex-poor person, I can say that poor people have damned few options. When you barely have sufficient funds to clothe and feed yourself, then migration is out of the question. The point of The Grapes of Wrath was that settling down somewhere took more money than moving about. With the new digital economy (whatever that is), the hand-skills of craftsmen of old are being replaced by the mind-skills of the new craftsmen.
With this realization that you seek not just warm bodies as laborers, but active minds; not spots for warehousing product, but areas to farm talent, the paradigm for what constitutes value, labor, and saleable product changes.
Somehow, I feel you read little past the dust jacket and foreword of the book you reviewed.
The single file vs. multiple file thing kinda breaks down at large levels. There's some threshold you hit, but I'm not sure what/where it is. All I know is, where I'm consulting now, they're definitely over the line.
:-) The mail servers are all being clustered as I write this, so half of them are clustered (with full failover) as I write this.
The typical mail server (where I'm at now) is a Quad Xeon, 4G RAM, 100G RAID, running Lotus Notes, and supporting up to 3,000 people (per server), with 50,000 people worldwide using email (and calendaring). At this level of use, we do have to have multiple servers, but we're trying to keep all metrics below 50% use (esp CPU and I/O). We could buy one herking big box, but bandwidth to overseas is expensive and unreliable, so we've got positioned, local mail servers. I should point out that all email going in and out, and that the mail gateways, are all running Linux on Penguin boxes.
I guess there could be a speed differene in the I/O channel when writing to a single file (SQL server style) versus writing to seperate files (spooled mail style, and also what Notes does), but I can't imagine it'd be more than a couple of percentage points, and largely negligible. You either have to write the information to a big file with some sort of To: information attached, or you have to look up some file path information, then write to a specific file. Is it faster to write it to a particular spot in a file, or to a particular spot in a particular file? I'll leave that argument for the folks who know, invent, and engineer hardware.
I'll concede that backups is a moot argument, since there are so many products that are able to back up a file even if a process has it locked.
With multiple files, you could span not only disks (at the low end), but RAID systems. Maybe do something clever like putting your email freaks on an expensive high-performance RAID, and everyone else on a slower RAID. (Users here do mail 20-80MB file attachments around quite often.) But that's getting at the extreme end. More likely, if you can use different directory paths, you can add disk space as needed, and quickly, without having to grow files, or file systems.
Oh, and before someone takes the obligatory dig at Lotus Notes, say what you want. It's the only system I've seen that can encrypt email so that the user can read it, but not the mail admin. Incredibly secure.
...who thinks that the latest ICANN decisions seemed designed to milk money out of those who can most afford to pay? Businesses, doctors, lawyers, hospitals....
Sendmail, and most other *nix mail systems, use a seperate mail file per person. Ditto for OpenMail and Lotus Notes. Exchange (when I was adminning it) ran as a single large database. It was basically an SQL-style server, with all the messages and information stored in tuples in the one big file. Subject was one field, To: another, etc. etc.
The one file is also one of Windows' weaknesses in the area of the Registry. When the registry (a database) goes whacko, you sometimes have to resort to deleting it, and doing a fresh install. Sure, it's fast, but it's prone to failure. Machines are getting fast enough that we should start burning some of the CPU bandwidth on redunancy inside file formats, checksumming....
Calendaring.
Lowered training costs.
Lowered support costs.
Ability to add on required widgets.
That required widget where I work is document retention. Owing to a legal battle a few years ago where someone found a steaming email that tipped the case, Legal decided that all email shalt live for 30 days and none more (with a few exceptions). We had to come up with a way of doing that, and a way of preventing email from being downloaded to the client. Needless to say, we didn't settle on Exchange (and I've admin'd on qmail, sendmail, Exchange, Lotus Notes, GroupWise, TAO, OpenMail....)
In a tech-saavy company, with tech-saavy people, the email system doesn't matter. Out here in the real world, where folks can't and don't install their own anything, and you have to send them to class, you do have to homogenize to save money.
Do steer clear of Exchange. Storing all the messages in one big database is asking for trouble. And it is trouble when the message store gets corrupted.
Fiber to every floor. (to a distribution center)
Redundant fiber between buildings.
Conduit everywhere, and leave pull strings inside. (go slightly bigger conduit than they recommend)
CAT 5e or 6 from distribution center (on floor) to outlets.
If you want wireless, do it per big room. Share wireless is sloooow, but very handy. If the room supports theater-style seating, or fixed desks, build RJ-45 jacks and power outlets into at least every other desk.
Some people want to drive it, and some want to work on it. Mechanics may not be great drivers, and great drivers may not be able to change their own oil.
Being involved in one doesn't mean being involved in everything.
Palm Pilot + GPS = most of what you want. Get a waterproofing kit for your Palm at http://www.aquapac.net/homeframe.html. You can buy AAA size batteries anywhere in the world, or even recharge them quickly off of a solar cell charger.
3 rd.html) for your Palm as well. Bet you could write an interface to your depth gauge via the serial input.
Write a hack that keeps your Palm on all the time, and instead draw power directly from something other than AAA's, like one of those rugged marine-duty batteries.
For sailing you need, what, speed and heading? GPS gives both. Or buy a magnetic compass (http://www.precisionnavigation.com/palmnavigator
Seriously. Server runs on Linux, Sparc, AIX, AS/400, HPUX, and probably a few others I know. Scaleable, redundant, and even does some strange-o stuff called Off Line services, where you can cache a web page locally, then work with the application while not online. Also plugs into Db2, SAP, Oracle, MS SQL, and allows you to run IIS as your web server if you so desire.
The whole Lotus.com site, and some of ibm.com is run off of Notes servers.
"Warren who? No, I'm sorry, I don't know, nor have I ever known anyone named Warren who sold me drugs. I mean, Warren didn't sell me drugs. I mean, if I ever bought drugs, it would have been a youthfull indescription. But that's not saying I did anything 25 years ago, because I'm not sure what I took, I mean did back then."
"The Machine that Changed the World" by James Womack, Daniel Jones, and Daniel Roos. Published by Simon & Schuster. No ISBN number, so you'll have to hunt for it. Nice little book out of MIT, about 10 years old, that studies the automobile and it's future. Nice starting point if you want to have an informed opinion. (flame mode off) After that, do a bit of reading on The Toyota Method (aka Just In Time Delivery), which has Darwin'd into the bastardized Six Sigma (whose champions seem to focus on statistical manipulation as holy grail, rather than processes). For those who don't want to read, I'll summarize the Toyota Method. Order in bulk, but take delivery in small bites. When problems arise, you've got less faulty product, the person who delivered it to you has less to recall, and there's less money tied up in parts/pieces that are sitting around in warehouses. (That's just part of the whole Toyota method.)
Anyway, the Koreans (KIA = Killed In Automobile) and the second-tier are aiming at a market, which is out crapping the crap end of the car market. Resale value is not a measure of engineering quality, or assembly quality. Ford had good quality, but they're managing themselves out of the market, and have frankly lost the hungry edge to do better. Chrysler still suffers from the Iococa legacy. (Remember, Lee Iococa went to President Nixon and said airbags will kill more people than they save, and we'll go bankrupt from the extra expense.) Oldsmobile was good a few decades ago, but haven't pulled any neat technology tricks since their Quad engine was created. Dodge makes nice trucks, but flimsy cars.
For the real skinny on engineering quality plus assembly fit&finish, take a look at the repair histories. http://www.consumerreports.org for example. True, the U.S. companies are improving (save Saturn, which can't decide whether to improve, or fold), but the improvements have been in the past 4-5 years. Which means I'm guilty of 90's thinking at the least.
Remember, a poor quality product is most often a deliberate management decision, not a failing of the engineers, or of the assemblers. American auto manufacturers are plagued by older management, who are outdated, undereducated, and curiously proud of it. Of course, they'll word it, "That's the way we've always done it." Display some adaptability, folks.
I'm a consultant out in industry, and I'm amazed at the amount of money that gets squandered. A company with an average market share, and an average product, can make money easily. They have chosen not to by choosing inept internal management, who make inept decisions, which cost money. Sure, it's only a few tens of thousands here and there, but it all adds up.
The space shuttle was conceived in the early 1970's. It's old technology, and old-style thinking in the same ways that most U.S. auto manufacturers continue to churn out low-quality, high-defect, technologically immature products.
The original space shuttle was a space-faring jet with air-breathing engines. The ideas were ahead of the technology, and they finally went to straight rocket power. The latest incarnation of the old idea, the Space Plane, is what the shuttle will be. NASA should really do the efficient heavy-lifting rockets to toss loads skyward, then send the technicians along in a much smaller shuttle to deal with things. The Russians perfected that technique.
The newer shuttles have been improved over the years, and I believe the newest ones are actually smaller than the original Enterprise, and make better use of the internal space (thus providing more useable space). The engines have improved, as has the entire rest of the vehicle. You never hear about tiles vibrating loose anymore.
The real problem here is that the U.S. Public demands 100% safety and success in all things spacegoing. Blowing a school teacher apart, and losing a few Mars probes hasn't helped their cause. But let's remember NASA has to deal with the low-bidder curse that plagues the U.S. Military. Lowest bidder = highest problems = highest number of fixes = highest long run cost = nice method for getting rich while being the "lowest" bidder. I think it was Kodak who offered two mirrors (tested) for the price of the one untested, imperfect mirror that made it into the Hubble. I can't remember which Congressman introduced the bill requiring one of his home-state companies do the mirror.....
Thought you were going to ask them 10.....
They shoulda named it BLoNDe.
And, no, the Lotus security doesn't suck that much.
In 1984 it was low, in 1996 it was low. It's low every time a sitting President runs for a second term. It also tends to be lower for the regional races when the governor or congressperson is running for a second term.
Telefeedback, force feedback, and a few other buzznames for the same thing. It's just like power steering. You move something a little bit in one way, and some simple hydraulic valvery assists greatly. Throw in some pressure sensors in the sphere, and it can tell if you're starting to change direction. Some low-speed computer can keep up with this information. No more complex than a large Caterpillar-style tractor.
/thought/.
But on the other hand, let's not fixate on inertia. I bet your system adapts to it really quickly. Riding a unicycle is non instantaneous in changing directions. You have to kind of work at it. Not a major effort, but it does take
Gaffe!
I meant the expansion or replacement of the Panama Canal. Either Popular Science or Popular Mechanics is where I first saw it as a kid, and I've seen other variations of it since. 1960's or later, but not later than the end of Reagan (and the death of the "Nukes are Safe" era).
Other posters here have corrected me. The newer route was going through some other area between North and South America. The idea was to bury nukes, then use them to push huge volumes of earth up and out of the way.