...hardware and software, and rent the rackspace, power, and bandwidth.
You'll have root access to your machine(s), with full control over whatever software infrastructure you might need, now and in the future. Your choice of OS, distribution, server software, scripting, mail services, etc.
The co-location facility can supply tape backup rotation or other tasks that require physical presence.
I've been doing this for four years (most recent uptime 485 days and counting) and have been very happy with the arrangement.
On a recent business trip to China, I got a copy of this DVD in Shanghai (Yes, it was $1 US.)
Since I'm not a big LOTR fan, it sat on a shelf for several weeks until a friend noticed it and went nuts. I gave it to him to take home, and as this was a couple months ago, the details are a bit fuzzy now.
In any case, it was NOT the "Two Towers" that you'd expect. The paper insert "cover" that came with it was a carefully Photoshopped/Gimped image that was based on a scene from the first movie. However, the contents of the DVD were some 1981 horror/fantasy film of a similar title (can't remember, but he looked it up on IMDB.)
What is surprising is that they would go to such lengths. In the Shanghai night markets, all DVDs are 8 RMB, or $1 US, unless they are accompanied by the full plastic packaging/insert, and then they are 24 RMB, or $3 US. It's not uncommon for the paper insert, the DVD silkscreen, and the actual contents of the DVDs to be from three separate films. So these guys are really just pushing plastic for a (very small) profit. That someone would have spent the time to dummy up something for "Two Towers" specifically is unusual.
This reminds me of an old idea for a "three strikes your out" process for politicians.
Every congressman who voted for this law would now get a strike against him or her for enacting an unconstitutional law.
After three strikes, he or she would lose office, and be ineligible for service again.
:-)
Re:What the heck is a channel?
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· Score: 4, Informative
A sales channel is the method by which a product goes from manufacturer to end-user. There are many varieties, some of the more important ones are listed below:
Direct channel: sales made directly (duh) by the manufacturer to end-users. Typical of companies which have high-price, low-volume, standalone products. Manufacturer is responsible for warehousing, distribution, extending credit to customer, collection, support, maintenance, etc.
Single-tier Value Added Reseller (VAR) channel: Resellers purchase a variety of gear from different manufacturers, integrate them, and offer a completed product to end-users. A VAR channel can specialize in certain types of technology and can provide specialized services over and above any individual manufacturer. Typical of medium-volume products. In this case, the manufacturer "creates demand" by marketing, advertising, and even offering customer support to end-users.
Two-tier VAR channel: For fast moving, high volume products, the first tier is made up of distributors, who provide warehousing and consolidated ordering to manufacturing. They are able to get volume discounts and allow the manufacturer to concentrate on shipments to just a few, large "customers." These distributors, in turn, then sell to individual VARs, extending them credit, etc. There is not typically end-user support or interaction at this level. Finally, individual VARs, which can be both mom-n-pop shops to large retail focused outlets, integrate and deliver whole products and associated services.
Retail channel: For "shrinkwrap" products and consumer-focused items, the retail channel has two or even three tiers to get from the manufacturer to the consumer (think supermarkets, Good Guys, etc.)
Dealer Channel: Similar to retail, but more in the franchise model where individual dealers are directly licensed by the manufacturer (think cars).
Multi-level Channel: A network of people that both sell manufacturer's products as well as recruit people to become additional dealers (and can be very annoying in the process:)
There are endless variations on these, but you get the gist, I hope.
The 'conceptual model' that is embodied in high-level languages such as C/Java or Verilog/VHDL couldn't be more different:
With C and Java, a developer is presented with an abstract "machine" that has one or more "flows of execution". The developer creates a sequence of data/variable manipulations and flow control constructs which guide execution based on the results of logical tests. This is a view of the world as a "stream of instructions."
With Verilog and VHDL, the developer is "sequencing" a "state machine" (with or without a synchronizing clock) by routing massively parallel binary state between logic elements that update that state. This is a view of the world as a "lot of things happening at once, connected by the rules that govern them."
It's not surprising that people (such as the poster of this story and the students you mention) have trouble shifting between them.
Jeremy Fogel presided over my divorce proceedings six years ago. My case was nearly last on the docket and I was able to watch him run his courtroom for half a day (unfortunately @ $200/hr). Some very ugly and bitter domestic situations were presented to him and I was fascinated at both the objectivity and the compassion he showed in dealing with each. I was worried that by the time my case came up (ultimately settled) he would be burnt out and not at the top of his game. I was relieved and quite impressed, however, with how he was able to treat each case as if the two sides and himself were the only people present and it was the first case of the day.
Six years later, my new wife was granted U.S. citizenship. By random chance, Jeremy Fogel, now a federal judge, presided over the swearing in ceremony for her and 1100 other people from 187 different countries. It was quite funny to look around the visitors gallery and see how many men in the audience registered a shock of recognition.
His customary opening speech talked to the rights and responsibilities these new citizens were assuming. For someone as bitterly cynical about the U.S political process as I am, I was surprised to find myself feeling the long dormant stirrings of patriotism in response to his utterly sincere and thoughtful comments about the role of individuals to effect change. He even acknowleged the abuses of corporate power and lobbyists yet was still able to demonstrate how in the end it was up to "us" to make a difference.
Political granstanding? A calculated performance to show off his oratory skills in a public forum? A voice of calm reason and deliberation in a world where thoughtless knee-jerk jingoism is the norm? I don't know which, but I left there knowing that the broad brushstrokes I normally use to paint U.S. federal government "bureaucrats" were just intellectual laziness and Jeremy Fogel was an existence proof to the contrary.
Now as I read this story about Yahoo! and the French courts, his name pops out at me, and once again some aspect of my life has intersected with this judge. I don't know his personal politics and I've never bothered to review his judicial record, but somehow I know that this hearing has at least some chance of justice being served.
For those who don't know, C-64 copy protection often seemed to involve intentionally messing up part of the disk in a particular way, so that when you tried to read from that part, you'd get an error code. Then, they'd just have their program try to read the disk in that spot - if there wasn't an error, or it wasn't the RIGHT error, it was obviously a copy ("Obviously", copy programs wouldn't copy errors, would they? [More advanced bit-for-bit 'nibbler' copiers popped up in short order that DID, so you could once again make functional backups of your software...but I digress.]) The problem is, every time the floppy drive hit an error, it would reset itself by "banging" the head repeatedly against the stop, eventually knocking it out of alignment.
Ah, yes, when I was in high school, I worked afternoons and weekends in the local computer store as a bench technician on C64s. Our number one service request was realigning the r/w head on the 1541 drive because of this. At $65 a pop (in 1980's money) it was quite lucrative...
Are parrots tricromats like us? That is, is their vision based on the same three wavelength-sensitive visual receptors (red, green, blue) that we are?
The reason I ask is that PC monitors are designed to present to us not the actual color mixtures of light reflected by objects, but a combination of these three hues adjusted in intensity to create the same response in our eyes as the actual object would, so it "looks" the same to us. But would it look the same to a parrot?
If their vision is based on a different system, say one, two, or four different light sensitive receptors, then what is displayed on a monitor would look nothing like it would to them in real life.
This same issue comes to mind in many sci-fi novels that depict alien life as being able to read human signs, interact with human control panels and indicators, etc., when chances are if we ever do encounter ET it may not even be able to "see" in wavelengths that our atmosphere is transparent to...but I digress:)
In my opinion, the "low rate" of click-throughs is not surprising. Advertisers should realise that people have lives to live, other things to do. When we watch a movie on TV, I bet that more than 99% don't really care about their ads, brands or products. Sure we may be mildy entertained by the ads, but that's about it. At best it registers subconsciously, so the brand will be _familiar_.
And that is precisely the purpose that brand advertising serves--to "prime" the viewer's mind such that at some future buying opportunity, they are more likely to select/investigate/examine the brand in question. You'd be amazed (or not) at how many people select "a trusted name" over a no-name product for no other rational reason. And "trusted" usually just means they've encountered the brand name more frequently than other brand names recently. In print advertising, it usually takes up to three "impressions" before a reader will even register that they've heard of the brand/product/company before. (This is frequently measured by magazine survey to assess the effectiveness of all the ads in an issue.)
Click through rates for banner ads measure how many people want to learn more about the advertised product. One percent is amazingly high for this. They don't even get this high a response in print ads when they have each ad numbered with a reader service card you can send in with all the ad numbers circled you want to know more about.
Remember, the usual goal is to leave the viewer primed for some future encounter with your product, not to get them to make a buy or investigate decision on the spot.
There were no details in the Yahoo article, but presumably they are using some sort of FSK or PSK technique to modulate an audio baseband signal. With about 200KHz of audio bandwidth to play with, could they use some sort of spread spectrum technique to make the signal appear as low level, wideband noise and thus avoid presenting a sonar signature? Spread spectrum RF can even use signal power that is below the noise floor in any given narrowband frequency range.
Anyone have a link to the technical details of this device?
I had forgotten all about it, actually, until I read the story.
About two months ago I was playing Mario Party with my nine year old son, and he was teaching me the mini-games. I don't remember which one it was, but basically, you had to rotate the joystick faster than the other player to win. Of course, the only way to do this quickly is to place the controller in the center of your hand and rotate it that way.
Sure enough, I was rewarded for my efforts (I finally beat my kid at something on the Nintendo:-) with a large, painful blister that took a week to heal, and I can still see a faint outline where the new skin grew back.
Well, I could sue, or better yet, just use a little common sense next time.
Just out of curiousity, how do you keep implants like these in place and functioning for such a long time (1978)? Does the scalp form a protective barrier or seal that prevents infection? Do the internal wires accumulate proteins or other contaminants ("brain cheese":-) and become less effective?
The picture in the article made it appear that the wires went through the head, not to a connector on the head. Maybe that was just an illusion.
In any case, how do you ensure that a cranial implant survives 22 (!) years? Was that a typo?
Noise is the enemy of the submarine fleet. Modern sonar and sonarmen are sophisticated enough to hear the slightest of noises which are conducted through the hull into the water. Equipment and machinery are shock and noise mounted to reduce noise leakage, and in general routine operations are carried out efficiently and quietly.
That being said, submarines at sea, even in peacetime, are constantly running emergency drills and procedures to test crew and ship readiness for battle conditions. So, just when your particular shift has retired to your sleeping quarters for your six-hour sleep-slot, you get awakened by a simulated reactor failure or a fire in the galley drill.
By the way, there is no "night" on a submarine:-) There are three crew shifts which work in a staggered 18 hour cycle or "day". At any given time, one shift is standing watch (operating equipment), one shift is performing maintenance or training, and the third shift is (hopefully) getting some shut-eye. These all rotate every six hours.
Yep. When people find out I was once a submariner (USS Archerfish, SSN-678), the first thing they ask is how we avoided claustrophobia. Funny thing was, though, that once the routine settled in (after about five minutes:-), the boat simply...became our universe.
Making our own oxygen and distilling our own water, a metal tube a few hunded feet long and mostly filled with machinery became the home to 100+ men whose lives depending inextricably on every single one of the others.
Not an experience easy to communicate--I guess you just had to be there.
Think of how long plants live--there's no fundamental reason why animals must age.
True, but natural selection has favored genomes which produce children and then get out of the way at a certain point (and thus stop competing for limited resources.) We've got many millions of years of evolution with this selection pressure, and I'd be surprised if we don't find that we have a much harder task stopping/reversing the aging process than appears. In other words, aging may be actively selected for rather just being the eventual result of accumulation of errors, etc.
I don't recall specifically, but isn't the unbreakable security of a OTP due to the fact that a given key is only used once?
The documentation states that once a key file of a given size is generated, it can be used "over and over again." If I remember correctly, an opponent who has two ciphertexts that were XORed with the same "OTP" can trivially recover the key (though I forget how.)
Hmmm, I should go dig out my Applied Cryptography. It's covered in there somewhere.
By running words together or changing their capitalization, you can preserve most of their original meaning while making the new word or phrase unique.
This has its roots in trademark law. I cannot trademark "Best" nor "Save" because they are in common usage, but I do stand a reasonable chance of trademarking "BestSave".
I don't know if this is US-centric or is the norm worldwide.
Another factor product managers must consider is how much business is being lost in a heterogenous environment. There are companies that say, "I'll buy 10,000 copies of your software for Windows, but only if I can use the SAME app on my 200 Mac stations." So, there is more revenue at stake than just the potential user base on Linux desktops; as a company I might do a Linux port (not expecting to sell huge quantities of it), just to get (or hold on to) this other revenue. Expect this to happen as Linux creeps more and more into the desktop arena.
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You were making a lot of sense until you got to the "wierd foreign programmers" bit.
I'm used to the knee-jerk invocation of clueless "executives", but the above is just bit racist, ya think?
...hardware and software, and rent the rackspace, power, and bandwidth.
You'll have root access to your machine(s), with full control over whatever software infrastructure you might need, now and in the future. Your choice of OS, distribution, server software, scripting, mail services, etc.
The co-location facility can supply tape backup rotation or other tasks that require physical presence.
I've been doing this for four years (most recent uptime 485 days and counting) and have been very happy with the arrangement.
Heh, we use to tie a couple feet of thread to one of the frozen fly legs, revive him, and walk around for a couple of hours with a pet fly!
On a recent business trip to China, I got a copy of this DVD in Shanghai (Yes, it was $1 US.)
Since I'm not a big LOTR fan, it sat on a shelf for several weeks until a friend noticed it and went nuts. I gave it to him to take home, and as this was a couple months ago, the details are a bit fuzzy now.
In any case, it was NOT the "Two Towers" that you'd expect. The paper insert "cover" that came with it was a carefully Photoshopped/Gimped image that was based on a scene from the first movie. However, the contents of the DVD were some 1981 horror/fantasy film of a similar title (can't remember, but he looked it up on IMDB.)
What is surprising is that they would go to such lengths. In the Shanghai night markets, all DVDs are 8 RMB, or $1 US, unless they are accompanied by the full plastic packaging/insert, and then they are 24 RMB, or $3 US. It's not uncommon for the paper insert, the DVD silkscreen, and the actual contents of the DVDs to be from three separate films. So these guys are really just pushing plastic for a (very small) profit. That someone would have spent the time to dummy up something for "Two Towers" specifically is unusual.
This reminds me of an old idea for a "three strikes your out" process for politicians.
Every congressman who voted for this law would now get a strike against him or her for enacting an unconstitutional law.
After three strikes, he or she would lose office, and be ineligible for service again.:-)
A sales channel is the method by which a product goes from manufacturer to end-user. There are many varieties, some of the more important ones are listed below:
There are endless variations on these, but you get the gist, I hope.
Does this answer your question?
The 'conceptual model' that is embodied in high-level languages such as C/Java or Verilog/VHDL couldn't be more different:
It's not surprising that people (such as the poster of this story and the students you mention) have trouble shifting between them.
I remember when the greatest thing about America was that we the people were the ones who held the power.
You must be quite advanced in age...
So, is this Fibonacci backup method?
Jeremy Fogel presided over my divorce proceedings six years ago. My case was nearly last on the docket and I was able to watch him run his courtroom for half a day (unfortunately @ $200/hr). Some very ugly and bitter domestic situations were presented to him and I was fascinated at both the objectivity and the compassion he showed in dealing with each. I was worried that by the time my case came up (ultimately settled) he would be burnt out and not at the top of his game. I was relieved and quite impressed, however, with how he was able to treat each case as if the two sides and himself were the only people present and it was the first case of the day.
Six years later, my new wife was granted U.S. citizenship. By random chance, Jeremy Fogel, now a federal judge, presided over the swearing in ceremony for her and 1100 other people from 187 different countries. It was quite funny to look around the visitors gallery and see how many men in the audience registered a shock of recognition.
His customary opening speech talked to the rights and responsibilities these new citizens were assuming. For someone as bitterly cynical about the U.S political process as I am, I was surprised to find myself feeling the long dormant stirrings of patriotism in response to his utterly sincere and thoughtful comments about the role of individuals to effect change. He even acknowleged the abuses of corporate power and lobbyists yet was still able to demonstrate how in the end it was up to "us" to make a difference.
Political granstanding? A calculated performance to show off his oratory skills in a public forum? A voice of calm reason and deliberation in a world where thoughtless knee-jerk jingoism is the norm? I don't know which, but I left there knowing that the broad brushstrokes I normally use to paint U.S. federal government "bureaucrats" were just intellectual laziness and Jeremy Fogel was an existence proof to the contrary.
Now as I read this story about Yahoo! and the French courts, his name pops out at me, and once again some aspect of my life has intersected with this judge. I don't know his personal politics and I've never bothered to review his judicial record, but somehow I know that this hearing has at least some chance of justice being served.
 
CRLs are the nuclear waste of the PKI industry.
They never go away, they keep getting larger, and eventually, there will be no place to keep them :-)
For those who don't know, C-64 copy protection often seemed to involve intentionally messing up part of the disk in a particular way, so that when you tried to read from that part, you'd get an error code. Then, they'd just have their program try to read the disk in that spot - if there wasn't an error, or it wasn't the RIGHT error, it was obviously a copy ("Obviously", copy programs wouldn't copy errors, would they? [More advanced bit-for-bit 'nibbler' copiers popped up in short order that DID, so you could once again make functional backups of your software...but I digress.]) The problem is, every time the floppy drive hit an error, it would reset itself by "banging" the head repeatedly against the stop, eventually knocking it out of alignment.
Ah, yes, when I was in high school, I worked afternoons and weekends in the local computer store as a bench technician on C64s. Our number one service request was realigning the r/w head on the 1541 drive because of this. At $65 a pop (in 1980's money) it was quite lucrative...
Are parrots tricromats like us? That is, is their vision based on the same three wavelength-sensitive visual receptors (red, green, blue) that we are?
The reason I ask is that PC monitors are designed to present to us not the actual color mixtures of light reflected by objects, but a combination of these three hues adjusted in intensity to create the same response in our eyes as the actual object would, so it "looks" the same to us. But would it look the same to a parrot?
If their vision is based on a different system, say one, two, or four different light sensitive receptors, then what is displayed on a monitor would look nothing like it would to them in real life.
This same issue comes to mind in many sci-fi novels that depict alien life as being able to read human signs, interact with human control panels and indicators, etc., when chances are if we ever do encounter ET it may not even be able to "see" in wavelengths that our atmosphere is transparent to...but I digress :)
In my opinion, the "low rate" of click-throughs is not surprising. Advertisers should realise that people have lives to live, other things to do. When we watch a movie on TV, I bet that more than 99% don't really care about their ads, brands or products. Sure we may be mildy entertained by the ads, but that's about it. At best it registers subconsciously, so the brand will be _familiar_.
And that is precisely the purpose that brand advertising serves--to "prime" the viewer's mind such that at some future buying opportunity, they are more likely to select/investigate/examine the brand in question. You'd be amazed (or not) at how many people select "a trusted name" over a no-name product for no other rational reason. And "trusted" usually just means they've encountered the brand name more frequently than other brand names recently. In print advertising, it usually takes up to three "impressions" before a reader will even register that they've heard of the brand/product/company before. (This is frequently measured by magazine survey to assess the effectiveness of all the ads in an issue.)
Click through rates for banner ads measure how many people want to learn more about the advertised product. One percent is amazingly high for this. They don't even get this high a response in print ads when they have each ad numbered with a reader service card you can send in with all the ad numbers circled you want to know more about.
Remember, the usual goal is to leave the viewer primed for some future encounter with your product, not to get them to make a buy or investigate decision on the spot.
There were no details in the Yahoo article, but presumably they are using some sort of FSK or PSK technique to modulate an audio baseband signal. With about 200KHz of audio bandwidth to play with, could they use some sort of spread spectrum technique to make the signal appear as low level, wideband noise and thus avoid presenting a sonar signature? Spread spectrum RF can even use signal power that is below the noise floor in any given narrowband frequency range.
Anyone have a link to the technical details of this device?
I had forgotten all about it, actually, until I read the story.
About two months ago I was playing Mario Party with my nine year old son, and he was teaching me the mini-games. I don't remember which one it was, but basically, you had to rotate the joystick faster than the other player to win. Of course, the only way to do this quickly is to place the controller in the center of your hand and rotate it that way.
Sure enough, I was rewarded for my efforts (I finally beat my kid at something on the Nintendo :-) with a large, painful blister that took a week to heal, and I can still see a faint outline where the new skin grew back.
Well, I could sue, or better yet, just use a little common sense next time.
Just out of curiousity, how do you keep implants like these in place and functioning for such a long time (1978)? Does the scalp form a protective barrier or seal that prevents infection? Do the internal wires accumulate proteins or other contaminants ("brain cheese" :-) and become less effective?
The picture in the article made it appear that the wires went through the head, not to a connector on the head. Maybe that was just an illusion.
In any case, how do you ensure that a cranial implant survives 22 (!) years? Was that a typo?
Noise is the enemy of the submarine fleet. Modern sonar and sonarmen are sophisticated enough to hear the slightest of noises which are conducted through the hull into the water. Equipment and machinery are shock and noise mounted to reduce noise leakage, and in general routine operations are carried out efficiently and quietly.
That being said, submarines at sea, even in peacetime, are constantly running emergency drills and procedures to test crew and ship readiness for battle conditions. So, just when your particular shift has retired to your sleeping quarters for your six-hour sleep-slot, you get awakened by a simulated reactor failure or a fire in the galley drill.
By the way, there is no "night" on a submarine :-) There are three crew shifts which work in a staggered 18 hour cycle or "day". At any given time, one shift is standing watch (operating equipment), one shift is performing maintenance or training, and the third shift is (hopefully) getting some shut-eye. These all rotate every six hours.
At least that's how it was on mine.
Yep. When people find out I was once a submariner (USS Archerfish, SSN-678), the first thing they ask is how we avoided claustrophobia. Funny thing was, though, that once the routine settled in (after about five minutes :-), the boat simply...became our universe.
Making our own oxygen and distilling our own water, a metal tube a few hunded feet long and mostly filled with machinery became the home to 100+ men whose lives depending inextricably on every single one of the others.
Not an experience easy to communicate--I guess you just had to be there.
True, but natural selection has favored genomes which produce children and then get out of the way at a certain point (and thus stop competing for limited resources.) We've got many millions of years of evolution with this selection pressure, and I'd be surprised if we don't find that we have a much harder task stopping/reversing the aging process than appears. In other words, aging may be actively selected for rather just being the eventual result of accumulation of errors, etc.
The documentation states that once a key file of a given size is generated, it can be used "over and over again." If I remember correctly, an opponent who has two ciphertexts that were XORed with the same "OTP" can trivially recover the key (though I forget how.)
Hmmm, I should go dig out my Applied Cryptography. It's covered in there somewhere.
To a Filipino speaker (Tagalog, anyway), this term would describe a unique form of oral sex.
This has its roots in trademark law. I cannot trademark "Best" nor "Save" because they are in common usage, but I do stand a reasonable chance of trademarking "BestSave".
I don't know if this is US-centric or is the norm worldwide.
Another factor product managers must consider is how much business is being lost in a heterogenous environment. There are companies that say, "I'll buy 10,000 copies of your software for Windows, but only if I can use the SAME app on my 200 Mac stations." So, there is more revenue at stake than just the potential user base on Linux desktops; as a company I might do a Linux port (not expecting to sell huge quantities of it), just to get (or hold on to) this other revenue. Expect this to happen as Linux creeps more and more into the desktop arena.