I just use folders for events or periods of time, and the folder contains the date in a standard form; e.g. 2006-summer, 200607-china, 20060504-phoenix-zoo, etc. Usually I can remember approximately when a picture was taken.
But yeah EXIF tags have a comment field so why don't you just put a sequence of keywords in there (or whole sentences if you like) and then use a full-text search engine? I've had good luck with Swish++ to search other kinds of documents (MP3 metadata, Word docs, PDFs, plain text, HTML, C source files, etc.) It can be extended with filters based on MIME type to extract keywords from each kind of document that it finds.
Also see this regarding how to extract dates/times from EXIF files and incorporate them into the filename.
I don't usually log out of my main desktop either, because session management on Linux sucks, so when I log back in all I get is the same applications open. I do not get all the same web pages open, all of my bash histories contained within the correct Konsole windows (both scrollback history and command history), same vim or scite sessions open, etc. It's not much better on other OS's (except that there can be "fast user switching" which is sortof a good idea). And who wants to have to remember passwords?
What is needed is really good session management - every app comes back up in _exactly_ the same state. (This can be achieved two ways - either don't ever quit the applications, just leave them running in the background, doing their output to a virtual screen which can be later realized on the physical screen; or, every app could support a session-saving/resuming API which is consistent across the windowing system. Either one would be a helluva lot better than we have now.) And, people need to start using physical dongles of some sort to log in, rather than the username/password mess. Stick in your key, and you are right where you left off ASAP (preferably in under a second). The key remembers every sort of token, PGP key, web ID, etc. for every system you use, and can be plugged into every system you use. It can be a USB key designed for this purpose, a smart card, or an iButton (but there needs to be a standard). Then guard that key like your car keys, and your information will be at least as secure as your car (or quite a bit more so, depending on how much you use the key to actually encrypt your data). If you can't justify more security for your car, it's probably enough information security, too.
I really hate the teeming, breeding crowd of security wonks these days because EVERY idea they come up with always increases the pain-in-the-ass factor to using the system in the first place. Government-mandated privacy policies just add to the mountain of paper trash that gets mailed every day. The fact that doctors cannot release details about patients without patient consent means I can't even ask about my own family members without a prior written release. Corporate IT policies where I work require making up new passwords every 90 days that are not only unique, but contain uppercase, numbers, lowercase and punctuation, and can never be re-used. And they expect me to remember them?!? And multiple intranet systems require independently changing passwords, too. Every web site requires its own userid/password to login (even Slashdot), and every damn time you have to fill out the same damn form (with a few quirks) and confirm with an email. There's a new web site that you need to sign up on every few days or so, and they all have their own password restrictions, and blithely assume any old fool could remember a password or two (neglecting the hundreds of others the same fool is already remembering). Enough already! Isn't about #$^!@ time we had a real hardware user ID system? The hardware is already out there, and nobody's using it!
Don't say it's big brother, because it's voluntary and does not require vendor lock-in. The software to support it should be open-source by all means, and there is room for multiple hardware standards too (but you can be sure that one hardware standard would emerge after a while). But why the hell are we not even on a path in this direction, at all?
Compared to what working techie people have to deal with, your parents have it easy. But it goes to show just how much of a PITA it really is - that they can't even deal with this one little idea, logging in with a username and password. And we're expected to deal with orders of magnitude more.
I read some good advice on a sign at a hotel once - the bed is for sleeping. If you do something else in it, like read or watch TV, you condition yourself not to sleep there. You will sleep better if that's the only thing you do in bed.
I think the government should set some pretty restrictive quotas on commercial fishing in both oceans and inland water bodies, and do something to encourage fish farming (in ponds, not pre-existing rivers). Otherwise some species are going to go extinct. This form of commercial greed is really getting outrageous, and this story is just one more example of it. Eating lots of fish is very good for us humans, but the planet can't keep up with the number of people anymore. It's time to find alternatives to satisfy the demand. I think for us to switch to mostly catfish and the like (raised in controlled conditions) might be the best way.
If you have the old caddy-type CD drive, a big pile of caddies is a good storage option. That way you never touch the discs themselves, so avoid the scratches and fingerprints. But those drives are getting hard to find. Personally I got a lot of caddies on ebay, but have had too much trouble with the drives (and besides, SCSI is its own hassle). I also got a rack-mount box with 8 caddy-type drives in it, and my plan was to put a low-end motherboard inside and use Linux to serve up individual NFS and Samba exports; but then I would have to deal with issues like automounting/unmounting on access, and a software eject mechanism that works across the network. I haven't gotten around to it so far. By the time I do, CD's may be obsolete.
I also got an NSM 100-CD jukebox on ebay. It has SCSI for the drive, and RS-232 to control the robot. I managed to find specs for the control protocol on the net, so wrote a program to control it. At one point I had an automount lashup that would automatically load the right disc when it is accessed, but it didn't work quite right, so I was going to reimplement it using FUSE. I haven't gotten around to that project, either.
Nowadays hard drives are just too cheap. Might as well consolidate all those discs in one place.
You know, it sure is a good sign that the network (and the Internet) are not as easy to use as they should be, when people still find it easier to shuffle data around on removeable media. I was thinking about that at work the other day, because I do the same thing, even though we have really ubiquitous networking there - both Ethernet and wireless, and they are secure and interoperable. First, I'd need to "discover" the machine to which I want to send a file. Bonjour is decent for that, at least for single-hop networking, but I imagine net admins don't like it. (And they also like to assign alphabet-soup machine names which don't make it any easier.) I'd want to assign my own memorable nicknames for machines that I use, probably. I would want to deal with a limited set of those machines that I use, to which I've assigned nicknames, and be able to filter out the irrelevant ones. And then be able to right-click on a file and "send to... the xeon in the lab", and do it without any password crap. The file ought to show up in an "incoming from Shawn's laptop" directory on the other machine. There's nothing very insecure about that as long as you treat incoming files like incoming email, e.g. don't execute something unless you know what it is. This method should work across every machine that I touch regularly, on every network that is interconnected via the Internet, and across every OS too. Right now, exchanging files via bluetooth is something like that, but it has limited range.
The best you can do now is have a central repository (e.g. file server) set up ahead of time, and mounted on both machines. Then you do the copy twice, and the file ends up taking up space on 3 disks instead of 2. Or email it, which is similar but less secure (it has to be set up in advance, and the file takes up space as files on 2 machines, plus a mail attachment, until you delete one or more of the copies). Or mount one machine's drive on the other (but that is usually some hassle and only works on the local network).
But because of admins, and paranoid security policies, we can't do easy ad-hoc file exchange. So we use USB keys or floppies or SD cards or CD-ROMs or whatever. And some admins can get paranoid about that, too.
Stevia is wonderful stuff. It's all natural (I've got some growing in my back yard), humanity has centuries of experience with it as a sweetener (some place in South America where it was first discovered by civilization), very sweet and zero calories. You can buy an extract in powder or liquid form to add to any drink. (In Japan they have stevia-sweetened soft drinks, but here the artificial sweetener companies have lobbied to prevent that. Stevia is legal, but cannot be marketed as a sweetener.) But I have been making my own sweetened iced tea. Just fill up a large tea ball with half dried stevia leaves (from your local herb shop) and half of a mixture of green tea and flavorings (I like dried peppermint leaves and sometimes add cinnamon too). Maybe 1/4 cup or so total volume of mixture. This is enough for a 1/2 gallon pitcher. Heat up the water (not quite to boiling) and let the tea steep for 10 minutes or so. I do this at work too, using the microwave to heat up the water. It's a hassle but a pitcher can last me a couple days. And it doesn't taste like a soda but for me it's very satisfying, and I know I'm drinking some of the healthiest substances known. Isn't a longer life worth something? (We'll see how that works out I guess.)
You can experiment with lots of other flavoring herbs, dried berries, dried citrus peels, dried apples and so on if you like a fruity flavor. Or get pre-mixed flavored green teas at some health food stores and herb shops. You can also substitute yerba mate for green tea, but green tea has some caffeine so that can be helpful for a programmer; and I don't like how the mate has so many fine particles that escape from the tea ball and make the tea look murky.
As for carbonated beverages one of the engineers at work runs an honor bar (buys stuff at Costco, keeps a fridge stocked, and has a coffee can to collect money) and something called Talking Rain has showed up. It is a carbonated punch-like drink sweetened with Splenda (there are several flavors). So I drink that sometimes when I want something carbonated.
Lemme guess, they're going to do that with SQL on Rails. (If you didn't see the screencast, that's part of their April 1 demo - they did a SQL query on "the internet", and claimed to have downloaded the whole internet into tables beforehand.)
To open up this question a bit more, which are the best guaranteed-anonymous ways to publish stuff like this? Freenet obviously. What about Usenet? Somebody at least is logging your IP address in that case right? Would you have to post from a university or something to avoid this?
What other choices are there? Is there an anonymizing bittorrent service in some nice laissez-faire country?
I believe the article makes an oversimplification by stating that AC is better for long-distance power transmission. Rather, it's easier to generate AC power (no rectifiers are needed), easier to switch (because the arc when the switch opens is much easier to extinguish - current flow actually stops for a short period of time, and the arc goes out), easier to run a motor from AC (no commutator), and easier to do voltage conversions (you only need a transformer). For really high-power long-distance transmission lines (like between states) they use very high-voltage DC because it is in fact more efficient. But I'm not sure how they do the conversion from DC back to AC in that case (would guess it's just a rotary converter - a motor running a generator). The losses from doing the conversion on both ends are acceptable only when they are less than the losses that would occur in such a long transmission line.
Losses are especially bad in AC transmission lines when the power factor is not correct, because while currents which are out-of-phase with the generated voltage waveform are expressed using imaginary numbers, in fact they are very real currents, and they cause increased heating losses in the transmission line. So the power companies switch large capacitors in and out of the circuit to try to keep the current and voltage in phase. (And they would appreciate if every device on the grid was power-factor-corrected, but this doesn't happen, mostly because motors are inherently inductive, and motors are the largest consumer of electricity. Sometimes they at least manage to persuade large industrial customers to manage their own capacitor bank, to correct for the inductance of their own motors, and give them a discount in exchange.)
The classic telecom reason, I believe, is that since the government required the old Bell monopoly to offer 100% reliability of phone service, everything had to be able to run on batteries during power outages. So they chose 48VDC as a practical voltage that doesn't require excessively big wires for large power transfer (like 12V would), yet isn't too dangerous (like 120V or 240V would be), doesn't require an excessive number of cells in each backup battery, etc. So from a data center perspective these reasons still make sense don't they? Data centers also need battery backup, and it's a hell of a lot easier to just have the batteries in the circuit all the time, on float charge, and therefore instantly available to run the servers when the AC power fails, than it is to continuously be converting AC to DC (to charge the batteries) then back to AC (to run the server power supplies) then back to DC again (inside the computers).
However you still cannot get away from some conversions because switching power supplies are so much more efficient than linear regulators. So the PSU inside the PC is just as complex - there's no way around it. Yes, you could use separate bus bars for 5V, 3.3V etc. but the currents become larger and there can be problems with noise coupling from one system to another. Computers need very well filtered, quiet 5V and 3.3V. So the multi-voltage external supply may be more efficient but not more reliable.
I am running some DC power at home, and one more advantage for me is being able to use solar panels to directly charge the batteries rather than relying 100% on grid power. Again it is easier to use DC since that's what the solar panels put out. This would also be an ideal thing to do at a data center. The government ought to do something to encourage it (the way some European countries are). (But my system is 24VDC. Maybe I will have to switch to 48V if that kind of PSU becomes abundant and affordable.)
It's full-featured and affordable. Yes if it was open source, you could try to make it better, but it's good enough already.
PCB does not do routing but is sortof passable for laying out by hand. Even for that though, I like Eagle much better.
Or you can use one of those board houses that provide the software for free (PCB Express and another I can't remember) but those are Windows programs. With Eagle, you have more choices where to get the boards made. I've heard good things about Olimex if you need to keep costs down, and aren't in a big hurry.
Or you can use Inkscape and then write a program to convert SVG to g-code or Gerber or whatever. This is one of my "some day" back-burner projects. I have a CNC micro-mill and would like to be able to mill arbitrary 2D designs. Inkscape is not optimized for PCB layout but could probably be used that way in a pinch.
Besides Netflix will need discs that will play in anybody's player, so there has to be a mechanism for that. Maybe they would be special discs, or maybe some discs will have permission and some won't, if they are still keeping that requirement that players connect to a server somewhere to get permission to play each disc? But that alone will cause such a big stink, that they are going to have a tough time. Just like DiVX all over again. (The failed Big Brother DVD format at Circuit City, not the codec)
Cringely (I think it was he) says MS is backing HD-DVD in order to strengthen its position just a tad, so that neither it nor BluRay can win 100%, because they think net downloads are the future anyway, and they don't want any new disc format to be too successful - better to make sure that you still need a PC in the living room rather than a mere piece of consumer electronics. But, I wonder if there will be a follow-up disc format too, to resolve all the problems that they are introducing into both formats, which the consumers are going to just hate.
And there has to be a more open format for home video anyway, so you can shoot with an HD camcorder and do editing afterwards. What format is that going to be? some special version of BluRay that doesn't have all the restrictions? So then if such a format exists, why not use it more broadly?
I've also wanted to do this for a long time. It's been a lot of work over several years, so I'm not sure if it was a worthwhile obsession, but I have combined a DC power bus with battery backup and supplemental solar power.
I don't understand how Oracle can possibly eliminate open-source software. Forking it is not a drawn-out process - it's as easy as copying the current source into a different subversion/CVS server if necessary, and going on from there. That's assuming that Oracle would even try to prevent the direct continuation of the existing development process. And even if they wanted to, could they legally change the license?
What if they just want to get some more revenue by offering paid support for BDB? Sleepycat has been profitable for a long time now.
Maybe Oracle fears their own product could become irrelevant in certain markets, and they want to diversify.
Here they come right out and say that BDB complements their existing product line, and they will continue to develop and support it, and they do not plan to change the license.
I'm not sure exactly how good this deal will be for Oracle, but I think y'all are getting pretty carried away with the conspiracy theories. Seems to me it will continue to be business as usual for anybody (commercial or not) who's using BDB.
I also continue to wonder why MySQL is so much more popular than PostgreSQL (or is it still so much more popular?) I like PostgreSQL better because there are no questions about it being 100% free software, and it has had advanced features for such a long time already that MySQL is only recently getting around to implementing. If people feel icky about having Oracle associated in this indirect way, it's just one more reason to switch.
Why not just use smart cards? One card could handle multiple keys anyway. Combine that with a PIN and you have 2-factor auth without the hassle of having to manually type in long strings of random numbers every time.
I would gladly trade my cubicle for a small, ugly room like the one in Brazil (remember the scene where Sam is fighting for his half of the desk shared between him and his neighbor? that part is ridiculous but the room itself looked to be an adequate size, if it just had a whole desk to itself.) Building offices is a one-time cost, not an ongoing one. If you work for a company that's been around a few years, it makes you want to ask, why don't they already have offices that were built on day 1, fully amortized by now so that it doesn't cost any more? What if they didn't maintain them too much, leaving that to the employees? Each could be free to decorate it in any way that he likes. So the only ongoing cost would be the same air conditioning, electricity and rent for the whole building (if applicable), the same as it is with cubes.
Cubicles are promoted by managers who think they are good for corporate image, or communication between employees, or because they think employees are more likely to waste time if not being watched closely. So I don't buy this "saving money" bullshit. The fact is that introverts in intellectual positions will be better off with their own offices, and the gregarious types might be better off in one big room, with no barriers at all (although I do not understand how this helps them get their work done, personally). Cubicles are a half-measure designed to make everyone equally unhappy.
The only place that I worked that actually had offices, they were shared offices. Fortunately the noisy people were in one and the quiet people in another (just worked out that way - lucky me). They were threatening to tear down the walls to encourage communication, which was ridiculous since that very company had built those very walls itself a couple years before, so the cost would have been double (once to build, once to tear down). So obviously cost was not the issue.
You don't see professors at universities being forced to give up their offices. IMO an engineer is doing similar work, and should have similar accommodations.
I find that when I really need to concentrate, a cubicle just won't do, and I have to go find a room to hide in. (I like to talk to myself when solving tough problems.) In some places this has been very inconvenient.
Slashdot Mirror
I just use folders for events or periods of time, and the folder contains the date in a standard form; e.g. 2006-summer, 200607-china, 20060504-phoenix-zoo, etc. Usually I can remember approximately when a picture was taken.
But yeah EXIF tags have a comment field so why don't you just put a sequence of keywords in there (or whole sentences if you like) and then use a full-text search engine? I've had good luck with Swish++ to search other kinds of documents (MP3 metadata, Word docs, PDFs, plain text, HTML, C source files, etc.) It can be extended with filters based on MIME type to extract keywords from each kind of document that it finds.
Also see this regarding how to extract dates/times from EXIF files and incorporate them into the filename.
I don't usually log out of my main desktop either, because session management on Linux sucks, so when I log back in all I get is the same applications open. I do not get all the same web pages open, all of my bash histories contained within the correct Konsole windows (both scrollback history and command history), same vim or scite sessions open, etc. It's not much better on other OS's (except that there can be "fast user switching" which is sortof a good idea). And who wants to have to remember passwords?
What is needed is really good session management - every app comes back up in _exactly_ the same state. (This can be achieved two ways - either don't ever quit the applications, just leave them running in the background, doing their output to a virtual screen which can be later realized on the physical screen; or, every app could support a session-saving/resuming API which is consistent across the windowing system. Either one would be a helluva lot better than we have now.) And, people need to start using physical dongles of some sort to log in, rather than the username/password mess. Stick in your key, and you are right where you left off ASAP (preferably in under a second). The key remembers every sort of token, PGP key, web ID, etc. for every system you use, and can be plugged into every system you use. It can be a USB key designed for this purpose, a smart card, or an iButton (but there needs to be a standard). Then guard that key like your car keys, and your information will be at least as secure as your car (or quite a bit more so, depending on how much you use the key to actually encrypt your data). If you can't justify more security for your car, it's probably enough information security, too.
I really hate the teeming, breeding crowd of security wonks these days because EVERY idea they come up with always increases the pain-in-the-ass factor to using the system in the first place. Government-mandated privacy policies just add to the mountain of paper trash that gets mailed every day. The fact that doctors cannot release details about patients without patient consent means I can't even ask about my own family members without a prior written release. Corporate IT policies where I work require making up new passwords every 90 days that are not only unique, but contain uppercase, numbers, lowercase and punctuation, and can never be re-used. And they expect me to remember them?!? And multiple intranet systems require independently changing passwords, too. Every web site requires its own userid/password to login (even Slashdot), and every damn time you have to fill out the same damn form (with a few quirks) and confirm with an email. There's a new web site that you need to sign up on every few days or so, and they all have their own password restrictions, and blithely assume any old fool could remember a password or two (neglecting the hundreds of others the same fool is already remembering). Enough already! Isn't about #$^!@ time we had a real hardware user ID system? The hardware is already out there, and nobody's using it!
Don't say it's big brother, because it's voluntary and does not require vendor lock-in. The software to support it should be open-source by all means, and there is room for multiple hardware standards too (but you can be sure that one hardware standard would emerge after a while). But why the hell are we not even on a path in this direction, at all?
Compared to what working techie people have to deal with, your parents have it easy. But it goes to show just how much of a PITA it really is - that they can't even deal with this one little idea, logging in with a username and password. And we're expected to deal with orders of magnitude more.
'Twas a dark and stormy night.
How did you get MacOS on it?
I read some good advice on a sign at a hotel once - the bed is for sleeping. If you do something else in it, like read or watch TV, you condition yourself not to sleep there. You will sleep better if that's the only thing you do in bed.
I think the government should set some pretty restrictive quotas on commercial fishing in both oceans and inland water bodies, and do something to encourage fish farming (in ponds, not pre-existing rivers). Otherwise some species are going to go extinct. This form of commercial greed is really getting outrageous, and this story is just one more example of it. Eating lots of fish is very good for us humans, but the planet can't keep up with the number of people anymore. It's time to find alternatives to satisfy the demand. I think for us to switch to mostly catfish and the like (raised in controlled conditions) might be the best way.
If you have the old caddy-type CD drive, a big pile of caddies is a good storage option. That way you never touch the discs themselves, so avoid the scratches and fingerprints. But those drives are getting hard to find. Personally I got a lot of caddies on ebay, but have had too much trouble with the drives (and besides, SCSI is its own hassle). I also got a rack-mount box with 8 caddy-type drives in it, and my plan was to put a low-end motherboard inside and use Linux to serve up individual NFS and Samba exports; but then I would have to deal with issues like automounting/unmounting on access, and a software eject mechanism that works across the network. I haven't gotten around to it so far. By the time I do, CD's may be obsolete.
I also got an NSM 100-CD jukebox on ebay. It has SCSI for the drive, and RS-232 to control the robot. I managed to find specs for the control protocol on the net, so wrote a program to control it. At one point I had an automount lashup that would automatically load the right disc when it is accessed, but it didn't work quite right, so I was going to reimplement it using FUSE. I haven't gotten around to that project, either.
Nowadays hard drives are just too cheap. Might as well consolidate all those discs in one place.
You know, it sure is a good sign that the network (and the Internet) are not as easy to use as they should be, when people still find it easier to shuffle data around on removeable media. I was thinking about that at work the other day, because I do the same thing, even though we have really ubiquitous networking there - both Ethernet and wireless, and they are secure and interoperable. First, I'd need to "discover" the machine to which I want to send a file. Bonjour is decent for that, at least for single-hop networking, but I imagine net admins don't like it. (And they also like to assign alphabet-soup machine names which don't make it any easier.) I'd want to assign my own memorable nicknames for machines that I use, probably. I would want to deal with a limited set of those machines that I use, to which I've assigned nicknames, and be able to filter out the irrelevant ones. And then be able to right-click on a file and "send to... the xeon in the lab", and do it without any password crap. The file ought to show up in an "incoming from Shawn's laptop" directory on the other machine. There's nothing very insecure about that as long as you treat incoming files like incoming email, e.g. don't execute something unless you know what it is. This method should work across every machine that I touch regularly, on every network that is interconnected via the Internet, and across every OS too. Right now, exchanging files via bluetooth is something like that, but it has limited range.
The best you can do now is have a central repository (e.g. file server) set up ahead of time, and mounted on both machines. Then you do the copy twice, and the file ends up taking up space on 3 disks instead of 2. Or email it, which is similar but less secure (it has to be set up in advance, and the file takes up space as files on 2 machines, plus a mail attachment, until you delete one or more of the copies). Or mount one machine's drive on the other (but that is usually some hassle and only works on the local network).
But because of admins, and paranoid security policies, we can't do easy ad-hoc file exchange. So we use USB keys or floppies or SD cards or CD-ROMs or whatever. And some admins can get paranoid about that, too.
Stevia is wonderful stuff. It's all natural (I've got some growing in my back yard), humanity has centuries of experience with it as a sweetener (some place in South America where it was first discovered by civilization), very sweet and zero calories. You can buy an extract in powder or liquid form to add to any drink. (In Japan they have stevia-sweetened soft drinks, but here the artificial sweetener companies have lobbied to prevent that. Stevia is legal, but cannot be marketed as a sweetener.) But I have been making my own sweetened iced tea. Just fill up a large tea ball with half dried stevia leaves (from your local herb shop) and half of a mixture of green tea and flavorings (I like dried peppermint leaves and sometimes add cinnamon too). Maybe 1/4 cup or so total volume of mixture. This is enough for a 1/2 gallon pitcher. Heat up the water (not quite to boiling) and let the tea steep for 10 minutes or so. I do this at work too, using the microwave to heat up the water. It's a hassle but a pitcher can last me a couple days. And it doesn't taste like a soda but for me it's very satisfying, and I know I'm drinking some of the healthiest substances known. Isn't a longer life worth something? (We'll see how that works out I guess.)
You can experiment with lots of other flavoring herbs, dried berries, dried citrus peels, dried apples and so on if you like a fruity flavor. Or get pre-mixed flavored green teas at some health food stores and herb shops. You can also substitute yerba mate for green tea, but green tea has some caffeine so that can be helpful for a programmer; and I don't like how the mate has so many fine particles that escape from the tea ball and make the tea look murky.
As for carbonated beverages one of the engineers at work runs an honor bar (buys stuff at Costco, keeps a fridge stocked, and has a coffee can to collect money) and something called Talking Rain has showed up. It is a carbonated punch-like drink sweetened with Splenda (there are several flavors). So I drink that sometimes when I want something carbonated.
Well I suppose if they had stuck to that scheme it would have had to come to an end anyway, or gain digits. Or it could have hex digits. :-)
586 (Pentium)
686 (PPro & PII)
786 (PIII)
886 (P4)
986 (Core)
A86 (Core 2)
Dude they still sell that stuff.
Lemme guess, they're going to do that with SQL on Rails. (If you didn't see the screencast, that's part of their April 1 demo - they did a SQL query on "the internet", and claimed to have downloaded the whole internet into tables beforehand.)
Remember that movie, how the self-aware self-replicating killer robots were called "mobile sword" or something like that?
At first I was afraid it was going to hurt Gentoo.
Those are good ideas.
Are the rails public property like highways or would competition like that actually be possible as things are?
I liked train travel when I was a kid but wonder if nowadays it would be like riding a bus - you only see the lower classes of people there.
I agree.
To open up this question a bit more, which are the best guaranteed-anonymous ways to publish stuff like this? Freenet obviously. What about Usenet? Somebody at least is logging your IP address in that case right? Would you have to post from a university or something to avoid this?
What other choices are there? Is there an anonymizing bittorrent service in some nice laissez-faire country?
I believe the article makes an oversimplification by stating that AC is better for long-distance power transmission. Rather, it's easier to generate AC power (no rectifiers are needed), easier to switch (because the arc when the switch opens is much easier to extinguish - current flow actually stops for a short period of time, and the arc goes out), easier to run a motor from AC (no commutator), and easier to do voltage conversions (you only need a transformer). For really high-power long-distance transmission lines (like between states) they use very high-voltage DC because it is in fact more efficient. But I'm not sure how they do the conversion from DC back to AC in that case (would guess it's just a rotary converter - a motor running a generator). The losses from doing the conversion on both ends are acceptable only when they are less than the losses that would occur in such a long transmission line.
Losses are especially bad in AC transmission lines when the power factor is not correct, because while currents which are out-of-phase with the generated voltage waveform are expressed using imaginary numbers, in fact they are very real currents, and they cause increased heating losses in the transmission line. So the power companies switch large capacitors in and out of the circuit to try to keep the current and voltage in phase. (And they would appreciate if every device on the grid was power-factor-corrected, but this doesn't happen, mostly because motors are inherently inductive, and motors are the largest consumer of electricity. Sometimes they at least manage to persuade large industrial customers to manage their own capacitor bank, to correct for the inductance of their own motors, and give them a discount in exchange.)
The classic telecom reason, I believe, is that since the government required the old Bell monopoly to offer 100% reliability of phone service, everything had to be able to run on batteries during power outages. So they chose 48VDC as a practical voltage that doesn't require excessively big wires for large power transfer (like 12V would), yet isn't too dangerous (like 120V or 240V would be), doesn't require an excessive number of cells in each backup battery, etc. So from a data center perspective these reasons still make sense don't they? Data centers also need battery backup, and it's a hell of a lot easier to just have the batteries in the circuit all the time, on float charge, and therefore instantly available to run the servers when the AC power fails, than it is to continuously be converting AC to DC (to charge the batteries) then back to AC (to run the server power supplies) then back to DC again (inside the computers).
However you still cannot get away from some conversions because switching power supplies are so much more efficient than linear regulators. So the PSU inside the PC is just as complex - there's no way around it. Yes, you could use separate bus bars for 5V, 3.3V etc. but the currents become larger and there can be problems with noise coupling from one system to another. Computers need very well filtered, quiet 5V and 3.3V. So the multi-voltage external supply may be more efficient but not more reliable.
I am running some DC power at home, and one more advantage for me is being able to use solar panels to directly charge the batteries rather than relying 100% on grid power. Again it is easier to use DC since that's what the solar panels put out. This would also be an ideal thing to do at a data center. The government ought to do something to encourage it (the way some European countries are). (But my system is 24VDC. Maybe I will have to switch to 48V if that kind of PSU becomes abundant and affordable.)
It's full-featured and affordable. Yes if it was open source, you could try to make it better, but it's good enough already.
PCB does not do routing but is sortof passable for laying out by hand. Even for that though, I like Eagle much better.
Or you can use one of those board houses that provide the software for free (PCB Express and another I can't remember) but those are Windows programs. With Eagle, you have more choices where to get the boards made. I've heard good things about Olimex if you need to keep costs down, and aren't in a big hurry.
Or you can use Inkscape and then write a program to convert SVG to g-code or Gerber or whatever. This is one of my "some day" back-burner projects. I have a CNC micro-mill and would like to be able to mill arbitrary 2D designs. Inkscape is not optimized for PCB layout but could probably be used that way in a pinch.
Besides Netflix will need discs that will play in anybody's player, so there has to be a mechanism for that. Maybe they would be special discs, or maybe some discs will have permission and some won't, if they are still keeping that requirement that players connect to a server somewhere to get permission to play each disc? But that alone will cause such a big stink, that they are going to have a tough time. Just like DiVX all over again. (The failed Big Brother DVD format at Circuit City, not the codec)
Cringely (I think it was he) says MS is backing HD-DVD in order to strengthen its position just a tad, so that neither it nor BluRay can win 100%, because they think net downloads are the future anyway, and they don't want any new disc format to be too successful - better to make sure that you still need a PC in the living room rather than a mere piece of consumer electronics. But, I wonder if there will be a follow-up disc format too, to resolve all the problems that they are introducing into both formats, which the consumers are going to just hate.
And there has to be a more open format for home video anyway, so you can shoot with an HD camcorder and do editing afterwards. What format is that going to be? some special version of BluRay that doesn't have all the restrictions? So then if such a format exists, why not use it more broadly?
Wasn't this an obvious thing to do, about 10 years ago? Wonder why it took so long.
I've also wanted to do this for a long time. It's been a lot of work over several years, so I'm not sure if it was a worthwhile obsession, but I have combined a DC power bus with battery backup and supplemental solar power.
http://ecloud.org/index.php?title=DC_power_system
I don't understand how Oracle can possibly eliminate open-source software. Forking it is not a drawn-out process - it's as easy as copying the current source into a different subversion/CVS server if necessary, and going on from there. That's assuming that Oracle would even try to prevent the direct continuation of the existing development process. And even if they wanted to, could they legally change the license?
What if they just want to get some more revenue by offering paid support for BDB? Sleepycat has been profitable for a long time now.
Maybe Oracle fears their own product could become irrelevant in certain markets, and they want to diversify.
Here they come right out and say that BDB complements their existing product line, and they will continue to develop and support it, and they do not plan to change the license.
I'm not sure exactly how good this deal will be for Oracle, but I think y'all are getting pretty carried away with the conspiracy theories. Seems to me it will continue to be business as usual for anybody (commercial or not) who's using BDB.
I also continue to wonder why MySQL is so much more popular than PostgreSQL (or is it still so much more popular?) I like PostgreSQL better because there are no questions about it being 100% free software, and it has had advanced features for such a long time already that MySQL is only recently getting around to implementing. If people feel icky about having Oracle associated in this indirect way, it's just one more reason to switch.
Why not just use smart cards? One card could handle multiple keys anyway. Combine that with a PIN and you have 2-factor auth without the hassle of having to manually type in long strings of random numbers every time.
Is that really $10k per year?
I would gladly trade my cubicle for a small, ugly room like the one in Brazil (remember the scene where Sam is fighting for his half of the desk shared between him and his neighbor? that part is ridiculous but the room itself looked to be an adequate size, if it just had a whole desk to itself.) Building offices is a one-time cost, not an ongoing one. If you work for a company that's been around a few years, it makes you want to ask, why don't they already have offices that were built on day 1, fully amortized by now so that it doesn't cost any more? What if they didn't maintain them too much, leaving that to the employees? Each could be free to decorate it in any way that he likes. So the only ongoing cost would be the same air conditioning, electricity and rent for the whole building (if applicable), the same as it is with cubes.
Cubicles are promoted by managers who think they are good for corporate image, or communication between employees, or because they think employees are more likely to waste time if not being watched closely. So I don't buy this "saving money" bullshit. The fact is that introverts in intellectual positions will be better off with their own offices, and the gregarious types might be better off in one big room, with no barriers at all (although I do not understand how this helps them get their work done, personally). Cubicles are a half-measure designed to make everyone equally unhappy.
The only place that I worked that actually had offices, they were shared offices. Fortunately the noisy people were in one and the quiet people in another (just worked out that way - lucky me). They were threatening to tear down the walls to encourage communication, which was ridiculous since that very company had built those very walls itself a couple years before, so the cost would have been double (once to build, once to tear down). So obviously cost was not the issue.
You don't see professors at universities being forced to give up their offices. IMO an engineer is doing similar work, and should have similar accommodations.
I find that when I really need to concentrate, a cubicle just won't do, and I have to go find a room to hide in. (I like to talk to myself when solving tough problems.) In some places this has been very inconvenient.