The CHM in Mountain View [http://www.computerhistory.org/] also accepts donations of items like this, and they have access to the proper resources to care for said artifacts. You may want to contact them as well. They will be happy to take your IBM branded radio at least:)
I don't know about where you are, but here in Austin TX the resolutions are fixed by channel. For example, ABC, NBC, PBS, and WB all broadcast at either 480i or 1080i. The FOX affiliate broadcasts at 480i or 720p. These are OTA only. On the local cable company, everything except FOX and ESPN are upconverted to 1080i - why I don't know. I believe the reason is 1080 is a bigger number than 720 and thus must be better. Finally, everything HD on DirecTV is 720p. Bitrates vary (IMHO PBS usually having the best starting in the evening when they turn off the three other feeds they provide OTA) all the time. The best resource I've found has been the AV Science Forum which has a rather large listing of HDTV information for various cities.
Finally, to add some fuel to the 720p vs 1080i debate - IMHO: it's all about your output device. If your output device is any type of projection (including rear projection TVs) then p is always better than i simply because that's how your device draws the screen anyway. I could be wrong, but at least it seems that way to me.
From my experience, there are a lot of people who make "free" software in windows and it's frowned upon becuase "it's a plot to install a virus on my system". Then there is the folks who feel that writing software for windows should earn them money no matter what. On the flip side, you can get a lot of flack for making non-free software on Linux or you can been seen as evil for charging for services that "should be free". Long and short of it: you can't please everyone. If it makes you happy and people are using it, just keep doing what you are doing. There is a vocal minority on either side of the fence to flame you:)
In my experience the SCSI subsystem was rather messy in 2.6.11. It didn't matter which host provider you used (or if you use the ATA one for SATA or CD/DVD burners) it just wasn't stable. I'm also finding that 2.6.12.x is much more stable all around.
There were 1090p trailers, but it takes a LOT of hardware to decode them (I couldn't get full framerate on a Dual G5 box at the apple store) and I'm sure the Windows version can't do them at all yet - hence the removal.
Is it possible that the desolder of the tabs may have damaged or dislodged one of the chips on the card.
If you want a miniPCI wifi card - I find that buying them alone instead of on a PCI adapter tends to be cheaper. Check out netgate.com - their cards are even supported by the ar5k or madwifi drivers.
6 foot cable length at resolutions over 1024x768. Not so much a problem on monitors, but the projector on my ceiling need a $700 DVI-fiber-DVI cable to go lengths over 6ft while still remaining in spec.
Most good Flat Panel displays (Hitachi, Sony, etc 17" and up) do support DVI - but DVI on Analog CRTs doesn't make much sense.
Have you connected through a major airport (like O'Hare or LAX) recently? You can easily spend over two hours walking time just from your car in the parking lot to your rental car at your destination. For folks who travel somewhat frequently (myself included), good shoes are almost a requirement.
I tend to wear New Balance "sneakers" with arch supports and can do fine. Even when running around all day with heavy equipment.
When I had 150 workstations that ran screen savers for the better part of the day at my disposal, I tried a few different and interesting things.
Seti and Distributed.net were fun to watch my ranking shoot through the roof, but in the end all those 486 workstations would tend to check out blocks more than they checked them in.
Then I stumbled across PointCast, and set that as the screensaver. This was nice, as their proxy was free at the time. So, all the machines displayed news headlines and custom channels (network announcements, upcoming local events, etc). That was nice, but PointCast was BIG - I'd love to find somthing like that which is a bit more network friendly (multicast?) today...
The biggest roadblocks I see are technical issues:
Routing - We now have over 5 BILLION subnets to route on the backbone. Name one piece of Cisco hardware that can traverse a routing tables with 5,000,000,000 entries in less than 10ms.
DNS - The great debate of AAAA vs A6 vs somthing else. And while we're at it, is an extension on the exiting DNS system worth it, or should we go to somthing better.
Security - Do we trust Verisign enough to continue issuing all the certificates that make the internet more secure? Do we trust them enough to keep name resolution secure? Can we use crypto on the Internet without worring about severe criminal penalties?
And on top of that there are the political issues. IPv6 will solve problems, but it will cost money. The world likes "bug fixes" and "service packs" better than product replacment. Remeber, upgrades can be hidden in support costs while new products require management approval.
IPv6 is coming, but prob. not until the entire far-east (India, China, etc) are as on-line as the west. IPv6 will be implemented out of desparation, and not by any IETF mandate. Of course, I have been wrong before.
I just recently stepped up to the plate you are thinking about taking a month or so ago at my company. My purpose in the office now is to act as a firewall between the developers and the rest of the company. So far, this has worked well - but it meant some sacrifices. Here is what I did:
First off is meetings. I'm in all of them now. I get callled into them on a whim. It sucks, but at least the developers can keep coding instead of being sucked into meetings.
No more code. I'm barely writing code in the office now. This has been an adjustment. I suggest you find a few projects to satisfy your coding needs in your off time and DO NOT BRING THEM UP AT WORK. I made the mistake of that once, and the company tried to sell my hobbies as products.
Be prepared to stand your ground. Upper management has no idea how the development process works. Writing code is a creative process, not a color-by-number process. It's going to take some work to make them understand that.
Take control of the development path for your team. Don't let the people above you bypass you and put your developers on other projects. Come up with a new management system. My immediate bosses are both Ph.Ds. They want down to the minute stats of what is going on - don't do it. You need to find a better model for managing deadlines and people (I adapted the management devices presented in eXtreme Programming).
Allow your developers freedom. The developers under me come and go as they please. They don't have fixed hours, but they do have fixed minimums. They are required 40hrs/week, but when is up to them. Remeber, coding is a creative process. If you have inspiration at 2am, then you should be able to excercise that inspiration.
Devlopers are not robots. Just because the boss (who doesn't sleep) sees a developer in the office at 2am doesn't mean that all the devlopers are available or that they should be interrupted. This one I am still working on. I get calls all weekend from my bosses asking for work to be done because they see one of the developers logged in.
Above all, be fair. Don't baby your developers and treat the rest of the company like trash. I have one (short) weekly meeting with the developers to discuss strategy and planning two days after the manager's meeting. This way the developers do not look like they are being treated special by not having to go to meeting, and everyone stays informed. It seems to work well.
Bumpy as this ride has been - it seems to be working. It will be tough for the first month (esp. if you are inserting code management, feature management, and bug management tools into your work flow), but it's a much needed thing. The productivity of our developers has gone through the roof sice I put on my flame-proof clothing and block the door to the developer cube-farm with my desk. 8^)
...try TightVNC. It's a new compression technology added to VNC. It's availble from tightvnc.com. I have found that it is more than usable over a 56k connection even if you are using the java applet in Netscape. The patches are GPLed, just like VNC so there are no unneeded restrictions on using it. Setting your bitrate is a different issue. If you are going to have people accessing via the Java applet, use a 8bit depth. Java can only handle 8bit, and dithering takes forever. If you are going to use the standalone clients (available for all major OSes), then use a depth of 16bit or 24bit. The dithering in the standalong clients is much faster than it is in Java.
If you need it, I also have a patch for VNC that only allows one session and then kills the server. It will even run a script on exit if desired. Drop me an email if you would like a copy. I would link to a page for it, but I heven't tested it in a high-load production setting yet.
This is starting to drive me crazy. Over the past few years I have watched as the restrictions, metal detectors, web cams, and ID badges have gone in place at schools. Is it just me, or has this gone too far?
I had the unique position while I was in High School to help make some policies that are still in place today. In my last week there (which happened to be a few weeks afer Columbine), I watched as the "School Saftey" committee reported on what should be done. ID badges for everyone, metal detectors at the door, police patrols of the building, and cameras everwhere. Excuse me for a moment, but schools are supposed to be a place of learning, correct? If that is the case, why not teach wrong from right?
It seems to me that all the teachers and aministrators are treating the symptoms and not the cause of these problems. Someone brings a gun to school, the immediate response is add metal detectors. Shouldn't the response be teaching that bringing guns to school is wrong? Someone unknown is roaming the halls and we didn't know. Immediate response: everyone must wear ID badges at all times. Wait a minute, I knew alomst everyone in my class, and I think the student population could easily identify someone out of place. But, no teaching the students to question folks would be bad. Instead let's show the world who everyone is, just in case someone does get in with someone in mind to find, they will be easily spotted.
I admit, I came from a smaller school (around 600 students total), and these solutions are not suited to larger ones. However, I still don't think treating the symptoms is the way to cure the desease. How about we stop pushing kids to always give 115%, and let them do what they can. I get a little bent when I am required to put in long hours and extra effort at work for extended periods. The current thinking is that if you are not in the to 0.05% of your class you will never get anywhere in life. With conditions like that, no wonder students are doing irrational things.
I've asked many an ISP the same question, and usually gotten the same response... "We cannot possibly filter by source IP at our border routers because it would increase our access time and slow access to the internet" To which my response is usually get a bigger router. I'm designing an internet security product that eventually will be marketed to ISPs for their high speed customers. As part of the agreement for getting these devices, we will require that all ISPs who support our product implement a 5-10 rule list at their border routers to block stupid things, like anything coming in from the internet with a Source IP of the ISP's network, all the reserved IPs, and anything going out without a source IP of the ISP's internal network. It just makes sense. If they need a bigger router, then so be it. Just giving customers access to the internet and refusing to put in common sense filtering rules in the name of slow routers and slow ping times is totally unacceptable. If someone from ISP land can give me a good reason why my logic is flawed, please let me know.
...you're telling me that my Printer Driver is illegal according to the DMCA because it turns white text on a white background to black text on a white background - thus curcumventing "copy protection"? How the heck can this be legal?!
Normally RedHat linux vs. brand X linux doesn't matter, however it seems that RedHat is taking steps to insure that doesn't work any more. It's very clearly visible in RHL6. Try compiling Apache w/ mod_ssl out of the box. NG. Can't find ndbm.h, obviously a bug right? Nope. "There are two flavors of ndbm.h that would like the honor of being called THE ndbm.h, so re-write the make file to use the one in db1 or db2." Checkout RedHat Bugzilla Bug number 2527. I don't know about you, but it looks to me like RedHat is trying to segment the market. I USED to be an avid RedHat fan, now I'm taking my distribution preference elsewhere...
Slashdot Mirror
The CHM in Mountain View [http://www.computerhistory.org/] also accepts donations of items like this, and they have access to the proper resources to care for said artifacts. You may want to contact them as well. They will be happy to take your IBM branded radio at least :)
I don't know about where you are, but here in Austin TX the resolutions are fixed by channel. For example, ABC, NBC, PBS, and WB all broadcast at either 480i or 1080i. The FOX affiliate broadcasts at 480i or 720p. These are OTA only. On the local cable company, everything except FOX and ESPN are upconverted to 1080i - why I don't know. I believe the reason is 1080 is a bigger number than 720 and thus must be better. Finally, everything HD on DirecTV is 720p. Bitrates vary (IMHO PBS usually having the best starting in the evening when they turn off the three other feeds they provide OTA) all the time. The best resource I've found has been the AV Science Forum which has a rather large listing of HDTV information for various cities.
Finally, to add some fuel to the 720p vs 1080i debate - IMHO: it's all about your output device. If your output device is any type of projection (including rear projection TVs) then p is always better than i simply because that's how your device draws the screen anyway. I could be wrong, but at least it seems that way to me.
From my experience, there are a lot of people who make "free" software in windows and it's frowned upon becuase "it's a plot to install a virus on my system". Then there is the folks who feel that writing software for windows should earn them money no matter what. On the flip side, you can get a lot of flack for making non-free software on Linux or you can been seen as evil for charging for services that "should be free". Long and short of it: you can't please everyone. If it makes you happy and people are using it, just keep doing what you are doing. There is a vocal minority on either side of the fence to flame you :)
In my experience the SCSI subsystem was rather messy in 2.6.11. It didn't matter which host provider you used (or if you use the ATA one for SATA or CD/DVD burners) it just wasn't stable. I'm also finding that 2.6.12.x is much more stable all around.
There were 1090p trailers, but it takes a LOT of hardware to decode them (I couldn't get full framerate on a Dual G5 box at the apple store) and I'm sure the Windows version can't do them at all yet - hence the removal.
Is it possible that the desolder of the tabs may have damaged or dislodged one of the chips on the card.
If you want a miniPCI wifi card - I find that buying them alone instead of on a PCI adapter tends to be cheaper. Check out netgate.com - their cards are even supported by the ar5k or madwifi drivers.
6 foot cable length at resolutions over 1024x768. Not so much a problem on monitors, but the projector on my ceiling need a $700 DVI-fiber-DVI cable to go lengths over 6ft while still remaining in spec.
Most good Flat Panel displays (Hitachi, Sony, etc 17" and up) do support DVI - but DVI on Analog CRTs doesn't make much sense.
Have you connected through a major airport (like O'Hare or LAX) recently? You can easily spend over two hours walking time just from your car in the parking lot to your rental car at your destination. For folks who travel somewhat frequently (myself included), good shoes are almost a requirement.
I tend to wear New Balance "sneakers" with arch supports and can do fine. Even when running around all day with heavy equipment.
When I had 150 workstations that ran screen savers for the better part of the day at my disposal, I tried a few different and interesting things.
Seti and Distributed.net were fun to watch my ranking shoot through the roof, but in the end all those 486 workstations would tend to check out blocks more than they checked them in.
Then I stumbled across PointCast, and set that as the screensaver. This was nice, as their proxy was free at the time. So, all the machines displayed news headlines and custom channels (network announcements, upcoming local events, etc). That was nice, but PointCast was BIG - I'd love to find somthing like that which is a bit more network friendly (multicast?) today...
The biggest roadblocks I see are technical issues:
Routing - We now have over 5 BILLION subnets to route on the backbone. Name one piece of Cisco hardware that can traverse a routing tables with 5,000,000,000 entries in less than 10ms.
DNS - The great debate of AAAA vs A6 vs somthing else. And while we're at it, is an extension on the exiting DNS system worth it, or should we go to somthing better.
Security - Do we trust Verisign enough to continue issuing all the certificates that make the internet more secure? Do we trust them enough to keep name resolution secure? Can we use crypto on the Internet without worring about severe criminal penalties?
And on top of that there are the political issues. IPv6 will solve problems, but it will cost money. The world likes "bug fixes" and "service packs" better than product replacment. Remeber, upgrades can be hidden in support costs while new products require management approval.
IPv6 is coming, but prob. not until the entire far-east (India, China, etc) are as on-line as the west. IPv6 will be implemented out of desparation, and not by any IETF mandate. Of course, I have been wrong before.
I just recently stepped up to the plate you are thinking about taking a month or so ago at my company. My purpose in the office now is to act as a firewall between the developers and the rest of the company. So far, this has worked well - but it meant some sacrifices. Here is what I did:
First off is meetings. I'm in all of them now. I get callled into them on a whim. It sucks, but at least the developers can keep coding instead of being sucked into meetings.
No more code. I'm barely writing code in the office now. This has been an adjustment. I suggest you find a few projects to satisfy your coding needs in your off time and DO NOT BRING THEM UP AT WORK. I made the mistake of that once, and the company tried to sell my hobbies as products.
Be prepared to stand your ground. Upper management has no idea how the development process works. Writing code is a creative process, not a color-by-number process. It's going to take some work to make them understand that.
Take control of the development path for your team. Don't let the people above you bypass you and put your developers on other projects. Come up with a new management system. My immediate bosses are both Ph.Ds. They want down to the minute stats of what is going on - don't do it. You need to find a better model for managing deadlines and people (I adapted the management devices presented in eXtreme Programming).
Allow your developers freedom. The developers under me come and go as they please. They don't have fixed hours, but they do have fixed minimums. They are required 40hrs/week, but when is up to them. Remeber, coding is a creative process. If you have inspiration at 2am, then you should be able to excercise that inspiration.
Devlopers are not robots. Just because the boss (who doesn't sleep) sees a developer in the office at 2am doesn't mean that all the devlopers are available or that they should be interrupted. This one I am still working on. I get calls all weekend from my bosses asking for work to be done because they see one of the developers logged in.
Above all, be fair. Don't baby your developers and treat the rest of the company like trash. I have one (short) weekly meeting with the developers to discuss strategy and planning two days after the manager's meeting. This way the developers do not look like they are being treated special by not having to go to meeting, and everyone stays informed. It seems to work well.
Bumpy as this ride has been - it seems to be working. It will be tough for the first month (esp. if you are inserting code management, feature management, and bug management tools into your work flow), but it's a much needed thing. The productivity of our developers has gone through the roof sice I put on my flame-proof clothing and block the door to the developer cube-farm with my desk. 8^)
...try TightVNC. It's a new compression technology added to VNC. It's availble from tightvnc.com. I have found that it is more than usable over a 56k connection even if you are using the java applet in Netscape. The patches are GPLed, just like VNC so there are no unneeded restrictions on using it. Setting your bitrate is a different issue. If you are going to have people accessing via the Java applet, use a 8bit depth. Java can only handle 8bit, and dithering takes forever. If you are going to use the standalone clients (available for all major OSes), then use a depth of 16bit or 24bit. The dithering in the standalong clients is much faster than it is in Java.
If you need it, I also have a patch for VNC that only allows one session and then kills the server. It will even run a script on exit if desired. Drop me an email if you would like a copy. I would link to a page for it, but I heven't tested it in a high-load production setting yet.
This is starting to drive me crazy. Over the past few years I have watched as the restrictions, metal detectors, web cams, and ID badges have gone in place at schools. Is it just me, or has this gone too far?
I had the unique position while I was in High School to help make some policies that are still in place today. In my last week there (which happened to be a few weeks afer Columbine), I watched as the "School Saftey" committee reported on what should be done. ID badges for everyone, metal detectors at the door, police patrols of the building, and cameras everwhere. Excuse me for a moment, but schools are supposed to be a place of learning, correct? If that is the case, why not teach wrong from right?
It seems to me that all the teachers and aministrators are treating the symptoms and not the cause of these problems. Someone brings a gun to school, the immediate response is add metal detectors. Shouldn't the response be teaching that bringing guns to school is wrong? Someone unknown is roaming the halls and we didn't know. Immediate response: everyone must wear ID badges at all times. Wait a minute, I knew alomst everyone in my class, and I think the student population could easily identify someone out of place. But, no teaching the students to question folks would be bad. Instead let's show the world who everyone is, just in case someone does get in with someone in mind to find, they will be easily spotted.
I admit, I came from a smaller school (around 600 students total), and these solutions are not suited to larger ones. However, I still don't think treating the symptoms is the way to cure the desease. How about we stop pushing kids to always give 115%, and let them do what they can. I get a little bent when I am required to put in long hours and extra effort at work for extended periods. The current thinking is that if you are not in the to 0.05% of your class you will never get anywhere in life. With conditions like that, no wonder students are doing irrational things.
I've asked many an ISP the same question, and usually gotten the same response...
"We cannot possibly filter by source IP at our border routers because it would increase our access time and slow access to the internet"
To which my response is usually get a bigger router. I'm designing an internet security product that eventually will be marketed to ISPs for their high speed customers. As part of the agreement for getting these devices, we will require that all ISPs who support our product implement a 5-10 rule list at their border routers to block stupid things, like anything coming in from the internet with a Source IP of the ISP's network, all the reserved IPs, and anything going out without a source IP of the ISP's internal network. It just makes sense. If they need a bigger router, then so be it. Just giving customers access to the internet and refusing to put in common sense filtering rules in the name of slow routers and slow ping times is totally unacceptable. If someone from ISP land can give me a good reason why my logic is flawed, please let me know.
...you're telling me that my Printer Driver is illegal according to the DMCA because it turns white text on a white background to black text on a white background - thus curcumventing "copy protection"? How the heck can this be legal?!
Normally RedHat linux vs. brand X linux doesn't matter, however it seems that RedHat is taking steps to insure that doesn't work any more. It's very clearly visible in RHL6. Try compiling Apache w/ mod_ssl out of the box. NG. Can't find ndbm.h, obviously a bug right? Nope. "There are two flavors of ndbm.h that would like the honor of being called THE ndbm.h, so re-write the make file to use the one in db1 or db2." Checkout RedHat Bugzilla Bug number 2527. I don't know about you, but it looks to me like RedHat is trying to segment the market. I USED to be an avid RedHat fan, now I'm taking my distribution preference elsewhere...